


How To Tame A Dragon's Heart

by Uchuu



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dragons, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Dragon Peridot, F/F, Flirting, Magical Pregnancy, Non-Human Genitalia, Peridot is a brat, Pregnancy, References to Depression, Succubus Jasper, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-28 08:49:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 41,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7633462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Uchuu/pseuds/Uchuu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a lawyer purchases a dragon who just so happens to have something to do with her recent case, things are bound to become complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“She's the first Dragon we've ever had in this town. I'm assuming you're interested in the purchase.” The woman dressed in gold walks around the villain chair, steps down the small height from the lounge area, down into the bedroom and comes face to face with her customer. There's something about the height difference that's intimidating, about the perfect black lines from the kohl pressed against her skin, to the length of her heels and the sheer gold shirt she has underneath her dark yellow trench coat.

Diamond is a fine woman, got her start in the obsidian market hundreds of years ago and was one of the most infamous sellers. She wasn't just tall and beautiful, but extremely powerful and if she really wanted to, she could have you killed in a crowded room and no one would have seen anything. She purses her lips, crosses her arms across her chest and pushes most of her weight onto her right foot. “You know she's not going to be cheap. First of her kind in centuries to come into this market and I should really be keeping her for myself.”

“Then, why don't you?” The woman replies, fixing the buttons on her red shirt before sliding her suspenders back into place.

She chuckles, “and have word get out and people try to break into my home and place of business? Besides, you've contacted me before about it and I thought I would be nice. Besides, there's a possibility you would be able to do something with a fertile creature like that.”

“Can I see her?”

She hums, “Jasper, I really do hope I'm making the best choice in selling her to you.” Diamond glances over her, brings out a hand to flatten out some stray pieces of hair. “Come with me.”

She keeps her entire collection deep in the back rooms of the mansion. One room would be paintings and artifacts, another for rare weapons and then there's a room simply for exotic items. Exotic items fall under any rare creatures and any rare item from one of these rare creature; phoenix feathers and talons, angel wings, dragon claws, dragon wings, and anything belonging to a mermaid or other sea creatures. The world they live in wasn't as magic filled as it has been in the past. Races were dying out, migrating to different countries or states or just to get away from the possibility of extinction. Then there were races like dragons that were so rare, people thought they became extinct long ago.

There have been many movements in the past years or so, to have people copulate, to become pregnant and mix races together just for it to live on. There were people still trying to do it, anyone with a penis trying to get whoever they could pregnant just to carry out their powers, name and kind. Jasper never needed to worry about that, she was not someone who could die so easily but at the same time found pleasure in knowing she could help build up another race of dragons or mermaids or even fae if she needed to.

The dragon was something that Jasper has always been interested in, ever since she first met one hundreds of years ago. It seemed strange for one to show up again, in their small city and Jasper was told about its existence only last month. It was rumors mostly, she doesn't really know how it was caught but her main interest was and always will be in breeding. She was a succubus after all.

When she's brought into the room, the lights turn on and the door shuts behind them. There are a myriad number of paintings covering the walls or sitting on easels around the room and then there's a cage in the center of all of it. Jasper stays back as she watches the woman go closer to it, she only sees the green of the creature near the back of the cage. She seems afraid but at the same time like she's ready to fight her captors and everyone else in the room.

“What do you want for her?” Jasper asks as she steps forward and the dragon becomes rather curious on who the other woman happens to be.

“If you can get her out of here unnoticed, I can think about charging you less. I guess about eight?”

“Deal.” Jasper says quickly, not even bothering to negotiate. She knows she won't win a lower price point. 

“I'll let you stay here with her because she's going to be a handful. However, I put a collar on her that will shock her if she gets any further than one hundred or so feet from you. I know you're wondering how I caught her but I don't think that's important. The details are never important.” She throws something over to Jasper, a small remote that is linked with the collar.

Jasper moves even closer to the cage, crouches down in front of to look at the dragon. The light green on her skin fades into a deeper green on her scales, against her lower back, deep into her tail. When the dragon bends its neck down, she can see the small horns that are centered against the dragons’ head. Jasper knows that dragons tend to have more human looking forms if they choose to shift into them. She knows this creature must be gorgeous in that form from the slanted shape of her blue-green eyes down to the simple curve of the dragons’ body. From her past knowledge as well, the dragon form is always longer than their human, their hind legs are always damaged from their need to be on all fours and some younger ones have more animalistic traits.

“I'm going to let her out,” Jasper speaks as her hands mess with the remote in her hand, it unlocks the bars on the side of the cage and it unhinges before swinging open.

The dragon whimpers, keeps herself backed up against the corner of the cage and Jasper reaches her hand out. The dragon thinks about taking the woman's hand but the sudden fear wells up again and instead growls and claws at her arm. Jasper pulls her arm back, looks at the deep marks against her skin and they heal within seconds.

“I'll leave you two alone. Call me if you need anything,” Diamond speaks and Jasper looks back at her as she leaves the room.

Jasper looks back at the cage, “she's gone. You think you can come out now?”

The dragon shakes her head. It wasn't the answer Jasper wanted but it gave her the knowledge the dragon did understand her.

“Can you tell me your name?”

The dragon hesitates, comes closer to the opened door and stares at Jasper. She reaches out a finger and points in the patches of white over her dark skin.

“I was born like this. What about you? You have a human form, is that how you've been hiding these years?”

She whines and then nods.

Jasper doesn't ask any more questions, she stands up and paces in the room. She wants the dragon to come out on her own with no coercion on her part. She doesn't want to force the creature out, to make her try to run or escape or hurt herself with that possible shock from the collar. Jasper stops pacing, starts to rummage around the room as she waits.

There are paintbrushes and scalpels and other tools just laying around in the room. When she picks up a screwdriver, the dragon puts her hand out of the cage. “You want this?” Jasper asks and the dragon just nods until the woman hands over the item. The dragon uses it for a few minutes, messing with the collar until it unlocks and clatters to the floor, she drops the screwdriver along with it and sits there.

It takes her a while to come out of her cage.

She stays on all fours, climbs out of the cage and uses the cage as a support to stand on two feet. She looks at Jasper and then at the paintings, her hand rubs her neck where the collar dug into the skin and created a deep bruise around it.

Jasper comes over to the dragon, stands close to her and notices how defensive the creature becomes. She looks like she's ready to hide back into her cage but doesn't move. She lets Jasper inspect her again—like a bear and its prey—the curve of her breasts, waist, down to the jut of her hips and the transition of rough skin to smooth against her skin. She's dirty on top of it all, there's dirt on the side of her face, her leg is scratched up and doesn't seem to be healing like it should. She wants to help the creature, to touch her, wants to do more than touch her but doesn't want to scare the small thing.

“Let's get you cleaned up, okay?”

Jasper walks to the opened door and the dragon hesitates before getting back onto all fours and following the woman. They don't walk far into the mansion, down this hall and a quick right down the next. There a guest bedroom at the very end of this hall that Jasper always stays at when she spends the night. It's rare she uses the room unless she's called up to spend the night with Diamond. Other than that, it's an ordinary room. A king-sized bed against the center right wall, dressers, side tables, an attached bathroom, and a little lounge area near the ceiling to floor window.

The dragon jumps when Jasper shuts the door and quickly scurries underneath the bed where she stays and hides. Jasper comes over, crouches down and the dragon peeks her head out. “Hey, I'll be back in a minute...Are you hungry?”

She nods.

“Do you think you can tell me your name?”

The dragon purses her lips, come out a bit farther from underneath the bed and Jasper leans down.  
Her voice sounds sore and cracked, as if she lost her voice and was very slowly gaining her ability to speak back. She hears the dragon's name, Peridot, something fitting to the green shade of her skin. She lays on the floor, crosses her arms and leans her chin on them.

“I'll be right back.”

With Jasper gone, Peridot climbs out from underneath the bed. She crawls around, sniffing the wood of the bed and heading over to the lounge chairs and climbing up onto one of them. She curls up in one of them and waits for Jasper to come back, waits for someone to give her clothes and take her back home. She feels like she knows it's not going to happen, that she's trapped here even if she doesn't feel so trapped. Peridot can't even remember what happened to bring her to this place. She was in the woods and the next thing she knows she wakes up in a car, trapped in the same cage that Jasper found her in. The people never said anything to her and she always felt like it could have been worse. Jasper was at least nicer than the woman who brought her here. That woman poked and prodded at her and kept asking her questions that she couldn't begin to answer.

She jumps when the door opens and she watches Jasper put a bunch of clothes onto the bed and heads off into the bathroom with towels. She hears water running from the bathroom and decides to climb down from the chair and up onto the bed where she sits, picking up articles of clothing and holding them up. “If you want to get out of here, you need to revert back into your human state and put on clothes.”

Peridot's face turns into a look of distaste. Clothing was itchy and uncomfortable. Even if she stayed in her more human looking form she wouldn't want to wear clothes either.

“You want to say here?”

Peridot grumbles and shakes her head.

“Good. You'll do it. Can I see your leg?”

The dragon shifts her legs from out from underneath of her, flatten them against the bed and stares at Jasper. She's distracted by the woman and she cannot think of a reason why. There's something about her appearance, the marks over her skin, the way that off-white shade of her hair frames around her body like a thick coat. She's different than other creatures she's had the unfortunate pleasure of dealing with in the past. Her hand reaches out to touch Peridot's leg and she looks at the hand, claw like nails that are so different compared to the thickness of her own. She hides her fingers by crossing her arms over her chest.

Peridot's left leg jolts back when Jasper touches her and she cautiously lowers it back down. She lets Jasper touch the wound, it's not deep but it's multiple scratches and around her ankle looks as if she stepped into a bear trap. “Does it hurt?” Jasper asks, trailing her finger against a healing scratch mark.

She shakes her head and pulls her legs back to her chest.

“Let me get you washed up. Can you shift for me? I know you don't want to and it's uncomfortable...”

She shakes her head again.

“When we leave, I'm going to need you to.”

Jasper heads into the bathroom and Peridot looks to her left and right before climbing down from the bed and following the woman. The bathroom title compared to the carpet is hard on her hands and she uses the bath tub to help her stand up. There's a heat coming from the water and Jasper turns the knob to stop it from filling the bath tub any more.

Bathing is easy, Peridot likes to think. She sits in the water and Jasper asks permission to touch her because it's not just touching her leg; it's her hair, her chest, and her lower body. It's just different than anyone who has ever touched her before. Dragons always have a bad rep because of how rare they are, manhandled and used for spare parts. Jasper's touch is oddly comforting.

She uses the spray nozzle to wash the dragons’ hair, to clean the soap from the rest of her body when she's ready to come out. She's wrapped in a towel before she steps onto the tile and practically falls into Jasper. She doesn't like standing in her dragon form, her legs are built differently and it's harder for her to keep her legs straight without them bowing and making it completely uncomfortable if not almost impossible for her to walk normally. She knows with practice she can, it's just not something she wants to do. A few years from now, her muscles would grow to accustom her inability to walk and she might be able to but that would be years from now. Right now, she doesn't mind the view from her hands and feet.

Jasper helps her walk into the bedroom, sits her down on the bed and uses a second towel to help dry the mess of blonde hair. “I have someone coming to bring food so you can eat before we go.”

She opens her mouth to speak but stops herself and frowns.

“What's wrong?” She bends down, wanting Peridot to speak to her and she does. She asks a question and moves back to cough. “Are you stuck with me?” She repeats what Peridot has asked her, “do you want to go back home?”

Peridot shakes her head and whispers something to Jasper, “I don't have a home.” She pulls back and climbs off from the bed and moves back over to the chair she once sat at, moves her tail to wrap it around her lower body.

There's a knock at the door and Jasper moves to answer it. The maid at the door hands her a tray and Jasper comes back over to set it on the small table that's in the middle of the two chairs. She goes back to the door to grab a ceramic cup and shuts the door before moving back to Peridot. She hands the dragon the cup.

Peridot inspects the cup before taking it, it's warm and she assumes it to be some sort of tea. It smells like peppermint. She carefully holds the cup and looks back up Jasper.

“I was going to take you back to my home, if that's alright with you.”

“My cave...”

Jasper looks up at her, most dragons had something they called home; caves, basements, anything dark and large to contain their things. “I can take you there. You can't stay there though...”

Peridot nods, takes a sip of the cup and lets the warmth soothe her sore throat. She knows Jasper isn't as bad as the woman who kidnapped her and brought her here but Peridot has very few experiences dealing with humans or other creatures. She spends most of her time sheltered and doesn't understand how most things work or how to understand people. She at least hopes Jasper's intentions are true.

Jasper's intentions seem true enough so far. The food she brings them to eat isn't terrible and the clothes she has to put on aren't the most uncomfortable but she appreciates being able to get out of this place. The only thing she doesn't appreciate is Jasper's stares because it embarrasses her. Especially in her human form with her light beige tint of her skin and how her body proportions seem to fix themselves. She can stand up straight unlike in her dragon form and her curves seem even more defined in clothing she's wearing.

Leaving the house wasn't an issue, however a maid stops Jasper and gives her a bag before the two leave. Going outside was a problem however, because the mansion was in the dead center of the obsidian market and there were hundreds of different people roaming the streets. There were so many different booths set up, trolls and goblins and fairies running all sorts of sales and discounted items. Jasper tend to ignore them on her normal walk through the market, only ever stopping for Diamond, her assistant or one of her friends who was a shape shifter, always looking to sell her things. As popular as Jasper was in this area, no one stopped her about the woman she was with and no one even came up to her, even the ones who said hello to her stayed away.

The market wasn't as interesting as most people would hope to fine when searching for the place. The idea of magic and different creatures was always so fascinating but most humans couldn't comprehend what they were experiencing and it was the reason why magic and humans never did well together. Jasper knew that for a fact, the people in her past life who were human never stayed long and she just hopes the dragon will.

Jasper lets Peridot lead the way to her cave, stays close to her even in the market just in case anyone does try to talk to them. Someone does and Peridot learns of the fake persona that Jasper has been putting on, how viscous she can really become. The dragon doesn't question it any more than she should, continues her way out of the market and down a street. She realizes that they're out far in the city and her cave isn't in a set place so all she needs to do is find a rock.

Finding a rock takes two hours of walking and a lot of Peridot becoming lost, confused or frustrated. Jasper just stays far back, allows the dragon to do what she needs to do and eventually when they're in the right spot of the woods Peridot stops walking. Jasper just waits, she's not sure why Peridot has stopped moving and in all honesty, she's not sure why she's letting the dragon lead. In any other situation, she would have taken her purchase back to her house and fucked it by now. This wasn't what she expected, she's rather fond of the dragon and she can't explain why.

“What are you doing?” Jasper asks, crossing her arms over her chest and simply watching.

Peridot shushes her, walks over to rocky wall and placing her hand over it. It takes a minute or two before the rock begins to shift under her hand and open a passage. She perks up when the passage opens and heads inside, Jasper following her and giggling when the woman jumps a bit as the rocks reform. Jasper doesn't just become surprised by the wall closing behind her but by the thousands of gold coins littered around the cave, mixtures of jewels and rich furs, the entire cave illuminated by this dim shine.

She tries to move around in the cave but runs into this small hill of coins that scatter at her shoes. “This is really where you live?” She asks, stepping onto the coins and nearly tripping onto the furs Peridot has already been sitting on top of. She had shifted back into her dragon form, tugged off the uncomfortable clothing and was laying down in the warmth of the furs.

Jasper lets Peridot relax but can't help but stare at her. It was so rare to see a dragon up close, the curve of her face that was so different than any other creature and she knew every single part of her was worth a fortune. The claws, the wings, even a lock of hair or a chance to take the virginity of such a creature, all of them were such a rarity and Jasper had it all at her hands.

“Why...Do you keep staring?” Peridot asks as she's laid flat on her stomach, using her arms as leverage for her chin. “It's annoying, stop it.” It's the most she can say before her voice cracks and she starts to cough.

“You're the first dragon I've seen in centuries. I'm curious, do you have wings?”

Peridot huffs and sits up, motioning Jasper to come closer to her.

Jasper maneuvers around a few piles of gold, boxes dipped into it and she nearly trips again before coming over to the mixture of furs and silk to sit down. Once she's comfortable, Peridot turns around, showing the succubus the strange pattern of scales on her back. She hadn't noticed it before and if she had, wouldn't think much of it. They follow the lines and curves of her bone underneath the flesh. She reaches out a hand to touch them and Peridot accepts the hand on her back, the fingers training against the pattern.

When she pulls her hand back, she can feel a strange residue on her finger tips, it sparkles in the light of the cave. She indicates it as glamour, something fairies are known to use to hide their true appearance from the human world. “You're fae?”

She nods and turns back around.

“How much glamour are you using to hide your real appearance?”

She shakes her head before trying to speak, “just the wings.”

“You're only half?”

She shakes her head again. She wants to explain it but it hurts for her to talk.

Jasper tries to think of how to word her questions so Peridot can answer, “Are dragons aligned with the fae? Is that why they've been unheard of for so long?”

She nods.

Jasper shifts her body, moves her legs and crosses them in front of her. “Even in hiding there are still so few dragons, right?”

Peridot nods, watching the woman move again and copying her actions by moving her own legs.

“How many are out there?”

Peridot lifts her hands; her fingers are webbed but can spread them enough to hold up the number seven.

“In the city or in America?”

She shrugs her shoulders and opens her mouth but pauses again, “why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“You took me home. Why?”

“I'm not intending for you to stay here and I'm not intending to lock you up like some sort of animal.” In truth, Jasper still doesn't know why she cares for this dragon. Why she didn't just put that electric collar back on and drag her ass home like she would any other purchase. Maybe she was growing soft, maybe the others were right about her. “Is there anything here you want to take to my home? You can always start a new collection in my basement.”

Peridot perks up at Jasper's words.

“You're just extremely different than any other creature I've ever come across. You're not fighting me, trying to escape and if you did try...This is all you have to return to. I guess it can't be so bad for you to belong to someone.” Jasper stops, “that came out wrong.”

“I've never had a home...” She sighs, “not like it matters much.”

Jasper look down, trying to find something comforting to say but not able to think of it. “Can I ask you something? How did you lose your voice?”

Peridot blows her cheeks up to make a face and lets the air out, she's rather childish in a way that Jasper can't begin to understand. She lifts a hand to her neck, “magic.”

“Like, someone cursed you or?”

She shook her head but didn't explain any more. Jasper assumes she will when her voice comes back.

Jasper's not sure how long they're going to stay here but she knows she has a job to do. She needs to take Peridot back to her home and if she must use magic to do it, so be it. Peridot decides to rest her head against Jasper's thigh and takes a nap. She wonders if she can carry the dragon out of here but doesn't know how to get out of the cave she's in now. She decides to just wait for the dragon to wake up, she's sure the capture and living in that cage could not have been comfortable so maybe she is just tired.

Waiting is taking forever, Jasper falls asleep in the process and when she wakes up it's due to the sudden sound of thunder crashing close by. It wakes up Peridot because she whines, pushes her face against Jasper's stomach and rests there. Jasper lays back, allows the dragon to draw her arms around and cling to her. The dragon seems like she attaches to people so easily and Jasper wonders if that's because she's young or because she's a dragon. Dragons are known for seeing the best in people, for not running or fighting or causing war unless necessary. At the same time, Peridot could barely speak and she questions that if she could if she'd even remind Jasper anything of a true dragon.

Jasper just waits until the storm is over and Peridot has shifted and put clothes back on so they can leave. She grabs a few items and makes Jasper carry them for her as they walk back into the city. Peridot whines a lot on the way to Jasper's house, complains she's hungry and wants someone to carry her. Jasper wishes she'd stop talking and missed her when she her voice was worse and she was unable to. It's better than it was yesterday at least, still sore and hurt for her to swallow. Her voice was coming back at least so Jasper didn't have to guess and figure things out as a series of nods and head shakes.

Something huge on Jasper's mind is the fact that the woman who sold the dragon to her, might have known what sort of trouble she seemed to be. It could have also been Jasper paranoid on the weird shift in personality from being unable talk and able or the dragon becoming more comfortable around Jasper in such a short amount of time. Whatever if it was, Jasper needed to calm herself down from jumping to the worst conclusions.


	2. Chapter 2

Jasper's house is very close to the Obsidian Market. It's nothing fancy but it's two floors and has original woodworking, decal and the entire ceiling looks as if flowers are trying to dig down from the plaster. It's charming, Peridot thinks as she looks around and notices a handful of people sitting in this little lounge plastered in books. She scrambles to escape the people staring at her, heading off across the hallway and ending up in the kitchen.

Jasper follows her, takes the few items Peridot has given to her and places them in an empty cabinet drawer just to keep them out of the way. Then she watches Peridot who is staring at her reflection in the silver from refrigerator. She becomes entranced at her reflection if only for a minute before she tries to open it but ends up hitting a button that causes ice to fall from it and onto her chest. She screeches and Jasper covers her ears, “Geez, you're loud.”

Peridot flings a piece of ice that got caught in her shirt onto the floor and begins to rummage around in drawers now. There are spoons, forks, knives, and potholders but nothing interesting for her to take and hoard aside from a single spoon she finds shinier than the rest. She pulls open another cabinet and manages to smack herself in the forehead with it and starts to whine, almost on the verge of crying and Jasper can't help but think she's a very strange dragon.

“Hey, why don't you sit down and calm down?” Jasper raises her voice, trying to get the attention of the dragon and Peridot looks at her and stops the whining and crying as if it was all a facade. “I know being in your human form sucks but you can't just go through all of my shit.” She comes over to Peridot and takes the spoon from her before putting it back in the drawer and shutting it, causing Peridot to make a face at her.

“Who are those people?” Peridot wraps her arms around herself and moves away.

“They're freshmen law students.”

“...Law?” She squints.

“You know, like lawyers?”

“I have no idea what that is.” She coughs, clears her throat and moves over to a small bench on the island and climbs up it to sit down.

“I'm a lawyer. I studied law in college and did an internship for...For the woman who locked you in that cage. I've been working with these students for a few months so they can get experience with the court systems for their classes.”

Peridot just stares at Jasper as if she's speaking in a foreign language.

“You have no idea what I'm saying, do you?”

“Nope.”

Jasper sighs, “I have an assistant who should be here soon, her name is Pearl and she's fae. Ask her for whatever you want while I'm busy but promise me you are not going to make a mess and please stay in your human form until everyone leaves. No one can know you're a dragon and I know you're aware of what can happen.”

Peridot pouts, drags her hands onto the table and uses it as leverage to pull her legs onto the chair and sit on them.

“Wait, I have a question.” Jasper stops before heading back into the hall, “how did you lose your voice?” She repeats her question from when they were in the cave together.

Peridot groans, her voice hadn't completely come back yet but it was easier for her to talk without it hurting. “So, you know how dragons breathe fire?”

“Yeah?” She was slightly intrigued by the idea of Peridot being able to do that.

“Well, I can't do that but what I can do...I've never done before. I've never had someone to train me so all I can do is, well this.” She holds up a finger and swipes her hand down until the light hanging above them starts to swing. “It's not impressive, I know.”

“You can move things with your mind. How is that not impressive?” Jasper raises an eyebrow.

“Well, what can you do? I'm sure it's much more impressive than anything I can."

“Well-” She starts before being cut off by a shrill voice.

“Jasper, the kids need you.” The woman who comes into the kitchen is tall, thin and the way her ears and nose are pointed Peridot decides she's either a pixie or an elf. She's pretty, short blonde hair, baby blue eyes and she can see why Jasper hired her. “Who is this?”

“Pearl, this is Peridot...Can I have a word with you in my office please? Peridot, stay here for a minute.”

Across the hallway from the kitchen is the lounge the students are in; the door is always shut because of how nosy they normally are. Jasper gets sick and tired of their complaining on most days and it's a nice getaway from listening to it. Down the hall from the lounge is Jasper's office and she heads down to it Pearl, shutting the door once they are inside. The office is messy and that only means Pearl hasn't cleaned up in here yet; there's a large oak desk against the windows with the shades all the way down to keep out the morning light, bookshelves to either side and a chair on the other side of the desk for clients or just for Pearl to sit. It's not the biggest office but it's soundproof and works for what Jasper needs, a place to get away from the students and a place to do her work.

“Jasper, please tell me what you bought this time.” The way Pearl speaks is already an indicator that she's going to become annoyed and complain. Jasper prepares herself mentally for it.

“I just need you to make sure she's okay. Like, give her whatever she wants within reason and make sure she stays in that form and the students don't talk to her or bother her or find out what she is.”

“Jasper, what is she?” Pearl crosses her arms over her chest.

“She's...A dragon?”

“She's a dragon? Or is she actually a dragon?!”

Jasper shushes her, “you know how rare they are?”

“You know there are law votes coming up to make buying and selling illegal. You cannot keep doing this.”

“There's nothing wrong with wanting to help repopulate different creatures. Especially dragons when they're so rare in the first place.”

“Exactly. They're rare, how do you know she really is a dragon and isn't a shifter?”

“She lost her voice when I met her. Due to her coloring and size and what she's told me, I can only assume she's telling me the truth. I've only met one other dragon in my life and while yes, it was hundreds of years ago, the appearance is very similar. Long limbs in their dragon form, an inability to properly use their legs because of the muscle and bone differences, and their overall qualities are different than any magical creature I've seen in hundreds of years.” Jasper wasn't sure why she was so keen on defending the dragon.

“What color is she?”

Jasper hesitates, “green, why?”

“Green dragons are normally tricksters, Jasper. You're really going to trust a dragon just because Yellow Diamond has given you her word she's to be trusted?”

“I don't trust Diamond; I trust the dragon.”

“How can you trust a dragon when I'm sure ninety-nine percent of people alive have never seen one outside of television and movies?”

“Did you trust me when we first met?”

Pearl squints and then shakes her head, “when we first met I seduced you into killing someone for me because they were a threat to my kingdom." 

“Yeah, and?”

“You know how long it took me to build up any real trust towards you? Especially after I died. I know you saved me and I understand you fell in love with the queen before me but you came around and pretended you were some sorceress for hundreds of years. Of course I never trusted you. I've always known what you are." Pearl sighs, moving across the room to sit down. The conversation seems longer than she expected and she can't help but be unimpressed with Jasper's reasoning.

“And it took time and you trusted me. I'm asking for you to trust me again. I know she's a dragon and I know she might not be who or what she says she is but I want to help her.” Jasper turns to look at Pearl who took the chair behind the desk.

“The only reason you have for wanting to help people is to gain and spread power. You've never actually cared for the person and I can't recall you ever being in love with someone, so there's always something in it for you.”

“Maybe I've changed.”

Pearl chuckles, trying to keep herself from laughing. “You? Change? Jasper, I've known you longer than anyone who has ever stuck around this town. You have not changed.”

There's a knock at the door before Jasper can speak and the door opens with one of the students peaking his head in, “Jasper, Connie and I contacted the company you wanted us to interview but they refuse to corporate. I was just thinking that maybe you could help us.”

“I'll be there in a second,” she sighs and the door closes. “Pearl, please just give her what she needs. You can scold me again later, maybe with a paddle this time.” She laughs as she leaves the room and Pearl just rolls her eyes.

Focusing on her actual job was frustrating most days, especially with some companies and clients that didn't want to do what she said to do. They went to the media or online forums and were always doing things that made Jasper quit on them. She didn't want to do it but if those people wouldn't trust her, there was no trust in Jasper being able to do her job. She's been a lawyer since the Obsidian Market opened a couple hundred of years ago. She did it originally because when cops were trying to come down on the market and shut it down innocent people were going to jail. Eventually, the cops were banned from having anything to do with the market unless an actual murder or fight took place. The market stopped making the news about fifty or sixty years ago and Jasper could do her job and market work in peace.

Her current case wasn't complicated and anyone really could do it. It was a murder case, started off with a young woman being accused of murdering the man she was having an affair with and was currently standing trial. Jasper's job was to prove she was innocent and bring someone new into the limelight. They were looking at the company she worked for her, the man's wife and his own family. It was obvious to her who committed the crime but it was just her powers coming into play.

Jasper was a succubus, and it made her job as a lawyer a hundred times easier. If she thought her client was lying, just touching the client would go a long way. She could learn anything she wanted about someone just by touching them and it worked much better on humans than it did the magic kind. She was always abusing her powers, using them for her own personal gain but at the same time it helped her know which clients she could help and which ones she couldn't.

Now, she was listening to three out of five students bickering amongst themselves on how to proceed. Those three were the annoying ones, the ones who might not be cut out to be lawyers but were trying anyway. Then the other two, Connie Maheswaran and Steven Universe. Jasper personally thought the two as a team were unstoppable, Connie was extremely intelligent for a human and Steven just cared a lot about the people he helped. It made sense for Steven to care so much, especially with the angelic roots he gained from his mother and the parental figures in his life. There was his father Greg who was always so caring, thoughtful and tried to see the best of everyone, his mother Rose who fell from grace and happened to be the sweetest and strongest woman Jasper's ever known. Rose was once cherubim turned fallen angel, so Steven managed to gain a lot of her powers as he grew up. On top of his parents there was Pearl, not only Jasper's assistant but Rose's girlfriend.

Connie and Steven were the two who figured out most of the information by going undercover themselves. They would take badges to get in or ask for help by having a friend tamper with security cameras inside of buildings, and while none of it was legal the two did it in the name of justice. Jasper tried to lead her students down the right path but getting the truth was always better than what was the right thing to do sometimes.

“Okay, so run this by me again.” Jasper crosses her arms, leaning against the door frame.

“The cops found new evidence and they're dropping the charges against our client,” one of the girls in the room speaks and Steven and Connie both sigh. They've done a lot of work to get information for the case.

“It's fine because I have a new client. I'm going to warn you that she is a mermaid so don't do anything to make her mad or uncomfortable. She's not going to be able to meet with us yet and I know it's not our sort of case but she's a good friend of mine.”

“What's the case?” Connie looks over to Jasper.

“Well, all of the cases we've had since the school year started have been murders, abuse, or kidnapping. Lazuli has a case against this company that creates equipment for fishing and boating. Hooks, nets, fishing rods. She's trying to build evidence that they're adding chemicals that are harmful to waters and other sea life, so this would include all sea creatures not just fish and dolphins.”

“What sort of evidence does she have?”

“She has damage on her arm caused by pieces of a net she got caught in and she gave me the net and I sent it to Garnet and she's going to check it out for me. I want you guys all to dig up everything you can on the company for me. It's called Aqua Marina and it's two words not one, it's a company that Diamond owns but it's run by Lapis Lazuli. She's the woman who came to me about this. Their products come from a sister shop in Ocean City and from there, I don't know some manufacturer. Look into it, call me if you need anything and be out of here in an hour.

The students don't respond because they know not to, they begin their research as Jasper leaves the room and heads back into the kitchen. She acknowledges Pearl who is sitting next to Peridot and getting her own work done and Jasper fixes herself a cup of coffee.

“Are you going to return Lapis' call or do I have to go down and see her?” Pearl asks and Jasper shrugs.

Peridot moves over to Pearl and whispers in her ear.

Pearl turns to her, “Lapis is a client of ours.” She looks over to Jasper again, “you do realize that this is Diamond's company. She could be doing this to track down and capture more creatures. You know what it would mean to find a bevy?”

“I don't understand why you're so quick to judge her.” Jasper leans in against the counter and takes a sip from her cup. She's curious how her dragon and Pearl became friends so quickly more than she cares about Lapis now.

Peridot leans into Pearl again.

“Peridot wants to know if the reason why you're so blind is because you're fucking Diamond.” Pearl's rarely this vulgar with her words but she's just repeating what Peridot said.

“I saw you two when they brought me in. It's obvious...” Peridot speaks, gripping the ceramic cup in front of her and taking a sip from it.

“I thought you told me you were going to end your relationship with her, but clearly not if you bought a dragon from her.” Pearl is frustrated, not just because of any feelings she still had towards Jasper but because Jasper lied to her.

“I'm not sleeping with her. I had a relationship with her ex-wife but it was like a hundred years ago and it's the reason why she and I still talk. Besides, she's the only person I know who is willing to sell to me anymore.”

“Well, why don't you tell Peridot what you did to make everyone in the market afraid of you? I'm sure she'd love to hear that story.” A different woman enters in the doorway and Peridot turns to look but all she sees is the mess of lavender hair. “I need Pearl, she and I have a date.”

“It's not a date-”

“Yeah, yeah. Hurry up. J, your kids are gone by the way. They were getting into their cars as I was coming in.”

“I sent them to do research. They work very fast.” Jasper sets her empty cup on the counter and her eyes trail to Pearl who is collecting her papers and sliding them into her bag on the island. “Where are you two going?”

“We're heading out of the city. Amethyst has a cousin who knows her way around the company that manufacturers the equipment.” Pearl stands up from the stool, pulls her bag around her neck and takes the dishes from the island and the cup Peridot had, to put into the sink. “We'll be back tomorrow morning and I'll keep you updated.”

Pearl leaves the kitchen and so does the woman who came in. It leaves Jasper and Peridot in the room by themselves and Jasper looks over to Peridot. She becomes suddenly nervous that Jasper's staring at her again, “what? I told you to stop staring at me.”

“Why did you say that?”

“Say what? That you and that woman are having sex? Because you are.”

Jasper comes over to the island, stands next to Peridot who looks away from her. “Look at me,” she grabs Peridot's arm roughly which means her groan. “You don't have the right. you know nothing about me and you shouldn't talk about things you know nothing about.”

“Let go of me.” She struggles until Jasper loosens her grip and she can take her arm back. “It's obvious that Pearl has some sort of feelings for you still as much as she pretends she doesn't. It's also obvious that-”

“Stop it. You can't act like you know Pearl and you know me when you just met us.”

“Jasper, I'm a dragon.” She climbs up on top of the island just so she can meet Jasper's height. “I know people, I can read people, and the best thing about it is about ninety percent of powers and magic don't work on me.”

“Diamond was able to though.”

“The only person that scares me is that woman who took me from the woods because she knew my weaknesses and knew exactly how to tame me. You don't and I don't care if you own me or not because you're never going to be able to control me to get what you want.”

“You don't know what I want.” Jasper shakes her head.

“You want to have power over me and be stronger than me and be able to spread that power.” Peridot lifts a hand to touch Jasper's face, trail her fingers against her cheek.

“What do you want then?” She asks.

Peridot drops her hands from Jasper's face and lays them in her lap, “no one has ever asked me that.”

“You're incredibly young and you've been on your own for such a long time. I'm sure there's something you want.”

“I-” She stops herself before lifting onto her knees, she doesn't really want Jasper but she doesn't want to be alone. She's grown accustom to being around people in her life and it started when she was a kid and living in an orphanage and lead into her having to fend for herself and deal with humans and markets and hunters. There are always people and she's never trusted them in her entire life. There was no reason to trust them. She trusted some aspects of Jasper but maybe it was because she could read her better than the ones before her. Jasper wasn't trying to hide or use magic to cast a shroud over her to keep identify secret. Jasper was just Jasper. “I want to kiss you.”

Jasper raises an eyebrow, “I don't think that's a good idea.”

“Why not?” She practically pouts.

“I don't want my abilities to have some sort of impact on you.”

“Wasn't that your plan all along? Well, that's what Pearl told me you liked to do. Buy poor and defenseless creatures like me and sleep with them.”

Jasper chuckles, she knows Peridot is twisting Pearl's word and she applauds the dragon for trying. “I'm not going to just sleep with you and toss you aside.”

“So, what are you going to do to me?”

“Do you really want to kiss me?”

Peridot hums, “you know, now that I've thought about it...I think I'll change my mind.”

“You have such a mouth on you. I miss when you weren't able to speak.”

“That was yesterday, don't be mean.” She sticks her tongue out at Jasper. Her voice is still hoarse when she speaks but she's able to talk again and it's all she cares about. “Is this what it's like to be tall?” She asks, sliding her hands back to Jasper's face, and her fingers trace over the bones hiding under the skin.

“I don't know, maybe if you grew a foot or two you'd know.”

“New question,” she's staring at Jasper's eyes now and they're so bright like amber. “Have you ever been in love?”

Jasper wants to pull away from Peridot and get back to her work but she can't seem to move away from her. Her hands just lift and slide against the dragon's wrists, “once or twice.”

“What about Pearl or that woman?”

“I love Pearl but not the way she wants me to. Diamond is different, it's business not pleasure. You're jealous?”

“Curious. I barely know you and I'm already hearing about these other women,” she hums, “not that it's a big deal.”

“Good. If you really wanted me all to yourself I don't think I could arrange that.”

Peridot looks at Jasper's hand on her wrist, looks at the size difference at just how big her hands are, how long and thick her fingers are. It makes her drop her hands from Jasper's face and stare. She shouldn't be thinking about letting Jasper touch her but it's the only thing on her mind. She wonders if Jasper was right about her powers having some sort of impact on her, touch was big when it came to succubus and it could drive a person mad.

She moves her gaze back to Jasper, realizing she was becoming rather distracted with the woman touching her. “Maybe you're right,” she swallows, wondering if it's getting hot in the room or if it was just her body reacting.

Jasper drags her hands up Peridot's arms, resting them against her shoulders and watching the dragon lift them uncomfortably before dropping them with a groan, “right about what?”

“You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

If Peridot had more control, Jasper was willing to drag her hands as low as she could get them before Peridot was writhing against the table. It didn't quite work because Peridot gave into the feeling. She wraps an arm around Jasper's neck and presses her lips roughly against hers. Jasper's lips are incredibly soft and Peridot can't help herself anymore, she's completely lost herself to the woman's power.

Jasper's hands slide down to the back of Peridot's thighs and pulls until Peridot falls against the marble and Jasper pulls her down the island. The outline of Jasper's cock is pressing against the inseam of Peridot's pants and Peridot is starting to squirm. She doesn't stop there because even if Jasper isn't planning on having sex with Peridot, she still wants to give Peridot a taste of her power.

It's just her hands that drive Peridot mad, that have her body arching from the island. The heat from them on her legs is different because of the cloth but as those hands slide up her hip and slip underneath the fabric of her shirt she feels different. She's whining, moaning and her legs wrap around Jasper's so tightly that the pressure against her groin was becoming maddening and the heat coming from Jasper's hands just made it that much more intense. That fluttering feeling in her stomach was just building up and her body was tensing up, toes curling and she was so flustered from the fact she may cum by barely being touched.

“You can't-” She bites her lip to hold back her whimpers. She's simply begging for Jasper to stop teasing her.

“Can't what?” Her hands slide higher, following the curve of her breasts and pressing her thumb against her nipples.

“Please, Jasper.” She's barely making any sense at this point and can feel the wetness soaking her pants. “Don't do this to me.”

Jasper wasn't planning on fucking her, she just wanted to tease her and use her powers but there's something about Peridot she can't place her finger on. She gives into the dragon, pulls back as her hands slide down to the hem of her pants and pulls them off, tossing them onto the floor. Peridot's dripping wet and Jasper doesn't know if it's the impact of her powers or if the dragon's normally so willing to be fucked.

Jasper unbuttons her own pants and pulls her cock from them. The thing about being a succubus was that ability to change her genitals to suit whoever she was with, from size to shape to type and so on. It was why she wanted to make it her mission to help people reproduce and help those dying magic breeds. She hasn't managed to help anyone yet, just buying and selling and reselling and it was all a mess at the end of it all but Peridot was a complete mess and Jasper's not even finished with her.

“You think you can take me?” Jasper asks, slipping two fingers into her and watching Peridot shift in place on the island. “Are you always so wet?” She's not even replying at this point, just a series of moans and whines and she calls out Jasper's name a few times. She doesn't even need Jasper to touch her anymore because she looks like she'll cum on pure ambition alone but Jasper wants to be the reason why.

She slides those fingers out of her and grips the shaft of her cock before pressing her head against Peridot's aching hole. She pushes in as slowly as she can, watching the dragon's body squirm again as she does so. Her heat is unlike anything Jasper has ever experienced. It's extremely hot and Jasper's own body is starting to feel like it's on fire. She tries to ignore it, presses her length to the hilt before pulling out and beginning to thrust inside of the creature. Now, Jasper's finally letting out those subtle moans from her own mouth.

Peridot's response was similar but very intense. Her feet slip up to Jasper's back and her heels dig into her shirt, she's now trying to meet Jasper's thrusts with her hips and she's beginning to very slowly shift back into her dragon form, unable to take the sensations running through her. She's trying to control it, trying to hold back her shift and focus on Jasper fluid thrusts. They stay like this for a while, Jasper changes her pace occasionally, to try and move faster and the most Peridot does is lift her back from the island and pulls into Jasper to kiss her. Her claws come out and dig into Jasper's shoulders when they touch again. Peridot feels that heat that makes her entire body tense up until she orgasms and Jasper keeps thrusting inside of her until she's filling her with her own hot cum.

Jasper cleans up when they finish, she pulls Peridot from the island and brings her upstairs to rest in her bedroom. Allows her to shift back into her dragon form because the energy that keeps her from doing it is long gone. She wraps the dragon in a blanket and leaves her as she heads downstairs to clean up the island and the floor, not to mention buttoning her pants again. She feels like she should change them but they're only slightly soiled and not too noticeable. If anyone asks she spilled something.

She's not sure why she lost her control with Peridot, what the dragon did to her or what she did to herself. She cannot stop thinking about because she's never done something like that before. She sighs, finishing cleaning the kitchen up and grabbing another cup of coffee before heading back into her office. When she does there's a woman in her office waiting for her, “I thought everyone was gone but your front door was unlocked.”

Jasper looks over her as she sits down in her office chair, she has a light blue tint to her skin and it works against the blue of her eyes and the deep blue of her hair. Jasper invites the woman to sit down and she shifts in her chair, puts her legs up on her desk along with her coffee cup “what are you doing here, Lapis?”

“You were in the kitchen when I came in and I would have disturbed you in there but you seemed busy. I just want to know if there's any updates on the case.”

“No, there hasn't been. You couldn't call for that?”

“Well, I called multiple times and you weren't answering, Pearl was. I wanted to give something to you. It's this weird material I found when I burned one of the nets.”

“Why did you burn one of the nets?” Jasper asks as she reaches forward for Lapis to hand over the small vial that was buried in her pocket.

“I just had a theory. I have no idea what this is but it looks toxic. It's eating away at the nets which is making them defective. If it isn't man made it's coming from a creature and there are very few creatures who have that sort of abilities. Witches can create it through potions but spiders, serpents, even dragons can create this sort of thing. If I'm right, it's eitr.”

Jasper stares at her when she mentions dragons and tries to focus, “I haven't heard about eitr since the Midgard Serpent and that was from Ragnarok.” She looks at the chemical in the vial and places it on her desk.

“Geez, Jas, how old are you?”

“I took a class about mythology in college. The substance was created by him and that's how it came to be. It's possible that somewhere down the line there are descendants of the serpent and have the abilities, but there's a possibility that this is like eitr and we are looking for someone who has poisonous abilities.”

Lapis sighs, crosses one leg over the other and leans back. “What happened to your shirt?”

“Hm?” Jasper touches her shoulder and feels the tear in her shirt and she was bleeding but it healed.

“Are you going to introduce me to your new friend?”

“No. She's sleeping.”

“What did you get now? I know your type and it's either someone who can dominate you or someone you can dominate. You have loads of variety. Last time it was a centaur...I'm assuming it's someone small this time. Oh, are you still seeing Diamond?” Lapis really loved to mess with Jasper, it was payback for the hundreds of years they were stuck together.

“How come?”

“I just have something I want to sell. I assume she'd take it if she still doesn't want to kill me.”

“She doesn't want to kill you.” Jasper sighs, taking the cup from her desk and taking a drink. “I'll talk to her. What do you want to sell?”

“Someone in my bevy died. He was sick and so his body broke down completely before it turned into sea foam. I was able to get his gills.”

“Really. I'll talk to her and sell them for you. Anything else?”

“No. Is there coffee left because I could use a cup?”

“Go on and help yourself.”


	3. Chapter 3

One of the best parts about their city was not just the Obsidian Market but the beach, it's why they called it, “Beach City,” and not the original name the town had going for it. Jasper remembers coming to the beach a few hundreds of years ago and she misses those days. She could surf, swim, and able to do favors for Diamond that she couldn't do on land. Those days ended when an event happened with her and Lapis and she refused to go into the water ever again if Lapis was involved. Lapis lived in these waters and being with her in water was almost toxic to her and the only way she could investigate the waters is if someone else did it for her. It's why she brought Peridot a lot and Lapis had to accept it.

They managed to convince Lapis, that Peridot was a shifter and enjoyed taking the form of a dragon. Peridot wasn't very convincing as a shifter but it made sense for one to take the form of a dragon for the rarity of them. It one of the reason why Pearl was so convinced that Peridot wasn't a dragon, that and the fact people in the past have pretended to be them. It was easy to tell the difference between a dragon and a shifter and Jasper was glad Lapis hadn't caught onto it yet. Lapis however, couldn't help but inspect Peridot and stare at her occasionally as the dragon stayed in the back seat. It was because Peridot was frightened of being in the back seat and being in moving parts made her unsteady like a dog if she tried to sit up or stand up. When they arrive to the beach, Peridot can't help but cling to Lapis and to Jasper for finally being able to stand on her own two feet again.

The marina wasn't empty, but for a small place like Beach City, the boats that were on the dock were only there to be kept by their original owners.. No one lived on their boats and they were rarely driven out into the ocean or so Lapis informed. Most of the people who went on their boat and into the ocean did not come back for days, and rarely never came back at all.

Lapis climbs down from the dock and heads onto the sand. There's a small cove that can't be seen by the docks, but to get to the cove they have to maneuver over some water and rocks to get to it. She places her bag down on the sand, and quickly begins to pull off her shirt and shorts as she waits for the others to join her. 

“Okay, we only have an hour because I need to get back to the students.” Jasper instructs as she sits down on a rock and looks out into the ocean.

“She's coming, right?” Lapis asks and Jasper nods.

“Right. Swimming. So much fun.” Peridot makes a sound.

“You can swim, can't you?” Lapis asks as she tosses her clothes onto a rock and walks into the water. The change in her body doesn't happen until she submerges her head underwater and there's this bit of blue light that shifts Lapis' body from legs to tail. Even in the water, the appearance of the tail has it's own shine and glimmer that's rather attractive. It distracts Peridot for just a moment.

“I can swim! I just...It's been a while. I really only go into the water for food.”

“Mhm, I'll wait.” Lapis is swimming around in the water as Peridot is removing the new shirt that Jasper gave to her from her body. She has issues with clothing, removing them without getting her ear caught or the fabric or having issues getting one arm out. Jasper finds it amusing and laughs instead of helping her.

“Why aren't you swimming?” Peridot asks as she pulls her leg out from a pant leg and nearly falls onto the rock while trying to get the other off. She really hates sand.

“That's a story for another time.” Jasper watches Peridot shift from human to the dragon form. She nearly falls but shifts onto all fours anyway, shaking the sand out of her hair. “You really don't do well with anything that isn't hard or flat surfaced,” Jasper notices.

“No, I don't. I will kick you though, so shut up.” Everything is easier as a dragon because she's so accustomed to being in this form. Walking on sand is a little challenging from the texture but she begins to walk towards the water, stepping on a shell or two as she feels that cool water against her skin. It feels incredibly nice for her, for her skin, to get away from the humidity today.

“Why don't you just take a better form to swim in?” Lapis asks as she swims over to her and circles the dragon.

“Dragons are notoriously good swimmers.” It was true, every single dragon—even those who were not sea or water dragons—could swim well. They had good lungs, could breathe under water for an undisclosed amount of time and their webbed hands gave them the dynamic they needed to swim. Peridot tries not to mention all of these things but they were important facts in her opinion.

“Huh.” She looks over to Jasper, “we're just going to look around and we'll be back in a few minutes.”

Lapis could never stay in the water for just a few minutes. She lived in the water, it was more important to her than anything else so a few minutes to Lapis could have been hours. She pulls Peridot down into the ocean with her and wants to specifically explore any netting, paddles, or rope that may have fallen. Peridot's not sure how long she's down there; being so close to the ocean floor is colder and darker then what she sees when she looks up to the surface and watches the light glistening against the water. She can barely see where she is at now but the shadows and shapes makeup for her nearsightedness under water. Because of her sight Lapis is the one to grab the pieces of nylon and other materials.

Peridot's not the best person for being underwater. When she's close enough to the item she can inspect it, and give it to Lapis but going back to the surface and coming back under makes her depth perception even worse. “Are you okay?” Lapis asks her and she turns in the water, making out her shadow before nodding. “I'll be right back.”

Lapis leaves her to go back to the surface and hand what she's gotten to Jasper who puts them in a small bag she's carrying her pocket. When she comes back down she can't help but stare at Peridot who looks as if something is wrong. They're still so close to the shore that Lapis can't figure out what it is.

“What is that noise?” She asks as Lapis swims over to her.

“I don't hear anything.”

Lapis watches Peridot swim out further into the ocean and then decides to follow her. The sound is strangely entrancing to Peridot but the closer she got the louder the sound became. She goes farther ahead of Lapis in the water, swimming off into the depth of the ocean. The noise is piercing her ears with a shrill sound but she can't help but swim closer towards it. She covers her ears to block out the noise, trying desperately to get closer but something makes her stop. The noise in her ears gets louder and louder and Peridot starts to scream.

Peridot cannot remember much after that, Lapis pulls her from the water and swims up to surface with her. The dragon is struggling, fighting to go back into the water and back towards that sound but Lapis uses all her strength to drag her to the surface and back over to the small cove Jasper's waiting at.

“What happened?” Jasper stands up and helps Lapis pull Peridot out of the water.

“I have no idea.” Lapis pulls herself from the water, that glimmering sapphire sparkle of her tail fading out as her tail reverts into legs. “She started screaming but there was nothing down there”

Peridot's clinging to Jasper, buries her face into the woman's chest and stays there. She's soaking wet and Lapis grabs a towel from the bag she brought with her and pulls Peridot away from Jasper for just a moment to wrap her in the towel.

“Are you sure there's nothing down there? Jasper asks as Peridot clings to her again. Jasper tries to soothe her, wraps a hand against the back of her neck and strokes different letters into it.

“Jasper, I didn't hear or see or sense anything. There was nothing in that water that didn't belong in the water.” Lapis grumbles, moving to grab her clothes and slip them back on.

“Well, maybe it's something already in the water?”

“There's nothing in the water that could do that sort of damage and if there was I would be aware of it, Jasper. I live in these waters.”

“And evolution has been adapting to the nature of humans and magical creatures for thousands of years. You know it's fully possible for there to be something in any sort of environment that's adapted or hasn't adapted to the environment. Yes, you're a mermaid and good for you but haven't there been reports of a strange sound out in the ocean?” Jasper lets go of Peridot, moves to help her put her clothes make on as she shifts into her human form.

“You sound like Pearl. But, yes, but whenever there are those reports it's normally a siren.”

“But people aren't dying and sirens usually kill. You're looking at this so black and white and I think we should get a second opinion.”

_

“I don't want Pearl going into the ocean with me.” Lapis shouts in Jasper's office and Pearl just looks at her.

“Why not? I'd be a great ally underwater and if you know-”

“I don't like you. Ever since you got me kidnapped the last time we worked together.”

“Yes, and I was the one who saved you.”

“You know how long I was trapped?” She breathes, tries to calm herself, “Jasper, I'm not doing it.” Lapis turned back to the woman who was sitting at her desk with Peridot in her lap. The dragon wouldn't leave Jasper alone when they came back, she was still frightened by the sound in the water.

“Lapis-”

“No. I'm not doing it. Nothing will make me do it.”

“Lapis.” Jasper tries to get her to stop ranting for a moment to speak to her.

“What?”

“Are you sure there's nothing that will make you do this for me?”

Lapis groans, she knows what Jasper is trying to do and already gives in when she normally wouldn't. “Get me double the price from Diamond and give me your tears.”

She contemplates for just a moment. Succubus tears can reduce the impact of a succubus power in the right potion or it can be used to amplify their strength amongst other things. “I can do that. Now, if we're done arguing let's go to the lounge.” Jasper watches Lapis and Pearl leave the room. “Peridot, you have to get down.” She watches the dragon move from her lap and when Jasper stands up, the dragon climbs into her set. “Stay here. I'll be right back.”

Jasper sighs as she leaves her office and enters the lounge, there's already more arguing going on and she makes it stop by raising her own voice to keep the others quiet. It's rare where she isn't brought into the middle of an argument, a strange discussion or in general must settle something. She understands that the students are young but Pearl and Lapis are much older and shouldn't need her to yell at them to stop acting like children. It was frustrating in a way but the two had a history that Jasper didn't know much about.

Jasper wasn't always in charge either, she used to do everything Diamond told her and before Diamond it was Garnet. Jasper was never on her own until fiasco at the market. Being alone meant building up people to help her do what she needed to do. She could convince Pearl into being her assistant and the school was more than happy to hand her students twice a year. They were normally interested in the underlying world of magic or wanted the credit for their classes. This year, having Steven and Connie was the best she could ever hope to have.

They were the two huddled up on the couch and looking over papers when Jasper came into the room. Pearl was standing at one side of the door and Lapis took a seat near the other side of the door. “I need you all to do something for me.” Jasper starts off, tilting her head to the side to stretch out her neck, “but first tell me what you learned.”

“Amethyst and I went out to explore and we spoke to a few people but they didn't want to talk to us so Amethyst got...A little violent with them. Anyway, all we learned was they slightly altered the materials they were using to build with but it wasn't anything that came across as suspicious. It came from Diamond herself to do it and we brought back some materials to test but everything seems inconclusive.”

“Connie and I stayed out by the docks last night and there was this weird sound she heard when we went into the ocean. I didn't hear anything but-”

“It sounded like something shrieking. At first it was different. It sounded like something loud pitch but calming and then it started to sound like something rubbing together and making this raspy noise. I don't know what it was and Steven had to pull me out of the waters because the night guard was looking around.”

Jasper and Lapis turn to each other and the blue woman shrugs, “I can't think of any water based creatures that make that sort of sound.”

“Snakes can,” Peridot's voice comes from the hall and she's standing so far away from everyone out of fear.

“Snakes?” Jasper turns to look at her.

“She's right,” Pearl speaks, “they can rub their scales together and make a very strange sound. I don't know why I didn't instantly think of it. Dragons can do it too, anything with thick scales on their bodies. However, even as a human a hybrid can't do what we're seeing with the equipment.”

“Serpents can. Some sea serpents can produce this toxic venom that can eat through anything and kill.” Peridot turns around before heading upstairs and leaving the others.

“Why would there be a serpent living in the ocean?” Pearl questions, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Wait, why would a serpent have some sort of impact on Peridot and Connie but not Lapis or anyone else who is in the water?” Steven asks.

“Well, I don't know.” Pearl sighs, “unless this is something else.” She looks to Jasper, “it could be scaring away or killing others who come into the ocean and aren't creatures of water like Lapis. If there is a serpent in the water. I still want to do research before we try and conclusively say there's this monster in the water. If we do, Diamond has to get involved.”

“If there's a serpent in the water I would know about it,” Lapis growls.

“No, you wouldn't.” Jasper says before looking at her students, “keep working on research for the company and check the water itself.”

Jasper stays in the room for a little longer, listening to the exchange of ideas and different information the students came across on the company. Lapis is complaining and starting little arguments with Jasper about the water is her home and she knows everything that goes on and Pearl is jotting down information she finds useful to the case. They only stay in the room long enough for the students to pack up their things and head out on their new missions. Connie and Steven are going back to the beach and the other students are heading out to the lab to check on the samples Jasper sent the day before and doing research on their own.

It's nice to have the house to herself and sometimes she's not sure why she decided to let students reside in her house and help her with cases. She doesn't remember when she first started doing it but she knows it involves something with Diamond. Everything she's ever done with Diamond has influenced Jasper is mostly positive ways. Becoming a lawyer was the main thing that the woman had helped Jasper with; branching out of her comfort zones and always putting herself first, Diamond also helped her shape her strict standards for her students and employees. The woman did a lot to help and nurture her and while their relationship wasn't the most appropriate, Jasper still appreciated the advanced learning curve.

In the evenings when the students were out doing research or simply done for the day, Jasper always felt a sign of relief when she had her house back to herself. Pearl would stick around for a few more hours if she was needed but tonight was different. Everything out their jobs to do and Lapis and her finally worked together to investigate the water deeper. Jasper was finally able to relax without the unnecessary bickering of the two and she could spend time with Peridot and try and find out what happened to her.

Peridot currently, was hiding under Jasper's bed where she had been hoarding items she had gathered around the house along with her own items she brought back from her cave. She perks up when Jasper comes into the room, climbs out from under the darkness and brushes herself off. She's naked which is always quite normal for her dragon form. Most of her body is covered in thick skin and scales so she doesn't wear clothes, not just because the dragon skin but for the sheer uncomfortableness of the clothing. Jasper's never managed to touch Peridot in this natural form of hers; there was no outline where the areola should be and even her vulva seemed to be hidden by the skin. She knows a lot about dragons and is sure there is something she can do to arouse the dragon and let those hidden features out.

“What are you doing?” Jasper asks as she moves around her room to her closet against the wall.

“Hm, Lapis gave me seashells.”

“Are you using my bed as a hoard?” Jasper looks over to as she rummages for clothes in her closet.

“What? Why would I be doing that? Pft, no.” She makes a face, laughs awkwardly to hide the fact.

“So, if I look under my bed?” She puts out some clothing onto her bed before beginning to take off the outfit she's wearing. First the jacket to her suit which she drapes over the back of her small desk chair and then the vest she's wearing. She took up buying professional suits because of Diamond, the woman always like Jasper in suit and tie.

“No! Don't look under your bed!” She hesitates as she sways where she's standing, as if she's trying to come up with some sort of lie. Jasper only chuckles in response. “So, what are you doing?”

“Right now? Going to take a bath and relax. Why?”

“Uh, no reason...”

Jasper is in the process of pulling her shirt off when she heads into the bathroom to turn on the water for the tub. Her tub is a reasonable size and could fit the two if she tried, but she drops some soap into the tub before coming back to put her dirty clothes into her basket. “Do you want to take a bath with me?” She asks as she grabs and twirls her hair up into a bun and pins it into place.

“What? Me? Well, I guess I could.”

“What else do you have to do?” Jasper asks as she slips the straps of her bra from her arms and unclasps the back. When her breasts spill from the confined space, Peridot looks away from Jasper. “Peridot? You okay?” She smirks, dropping her bra into the basket before pulling at the buttons on her pants.

“I'm fine.” She looks back to the bed as if she's ready to climb back under.

“So, you don't want to take a bath with me?” She's simply teasing the dragon now.

She grumbles, walking past Jasper and into the bathroom.

Jasper knows she's already won with the dragon, she slips off her pants and grabs towels and her robe before following her off into the bathroom. She hangs up the items on the hook of the door and watches Peridot staring at the bubbles in the water. “You can get in.”

“I don't know yet.” She watches Jasper, blushes at the sight of her body. She was toned in all the right places, the way her body curved into her muscles and the weight of her breasts couldn't be anything other than simply erotic. She was a succubus and Peridot was fully aware that the touch and sight could arouse her in ways she wasn't aware of.

Jasper steps into the tub, leans into the back wall and sinks into the water. It's nice, starting to become relaxing with the heat against her skin. If she had a bottle of wine she was sure it'd make her night even better but she has a dragon staring at her instead. “What's wrong?” She asks, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. The heat feels so much better on her tight muscles.

“Is there a serpent at the beach?” Peridot sits on her knees, peering into the water in the tub.

“Hm, don't know.”

“Serpents are dangerous...I don't really know how safe going into the water is going to be.”

“Lapis and Pearl can handle it. So, are you there reason why my television remote is missing from the lounge?”

Peridot stands up, “I may have apprehended it for a short time. You'll get it back. Maybe.”

“And my watch?” She opens her eyes when she feels Peridot step into the water, she shifts around and Jasper helps her sit down. She ends up with her back against Jasper's chest and she moves around in the water until she's comfortable in the position, splashing water out of the tub.

“Hm, I might have your watch but you're not getting it back if I do.”

Jasper's hands trail from the porcelain tub to Peridot's shoulders, “why not?”

Peridot blushes, leans into Jasper's chest and looks up at her, “because it's mine now. I told you everything you own now belongs to me.”

“Oh yeah?” She chuckles, “but I own you.”

“Hm, that's not important though because you let me run around the house and I get to steal all of the shiny things and electronics that I find.”

Jasper drops her hands around Peridot's neck, trails her thumb against her chest. “I don't think I said you could go around and do that.”

“What? Are you sure? Why do I have these nice and shiny things then?” She's laughing, moving to turn around and look at Jasper face to face. She lifts a hand from the water and trails the marks against her face, “I'm going to go take more things while you're getting dressed.”

“Like what?”

“What shiny stuff do you have in your room? I haven't gotten to look because Pearl keeps coming up to check on me.”

Jasper slips her hands into Peridot's hair, rubs circles against her temples. “I don't know. Lots of stuff, jewelry, belts, buckles on suspenders, I think I have a platinum dildo somewhere but don't ask about that. I know you already stole one of my lamps.”

She shrugs, “aren't you going to kiss me or try to seduce me again?”

“You act like I have ulterior motives.” She chuckles, dropping her hands and trying to get back to her relaxation. She's not sure how long she stays in the water but Peridot's already left the water and dried herself off before heading off into the bedroom. Jasper can see her on the bed from where she sits but once the water begins to get cool she climbs out of it.

Instead of grabbing her robe she steps into the bedroom, water dripping from her body and she unpins her hair and lets it fall around her. She watches Peridot who is staring at her and she scoots farther away, “does your power have any impact from far away?” Peridot asks as she pushes the blankets out of her way as if she's about to get into them.”

“Don't know. I usually just touch people but sometimes looking at me can be pretty-”

“Alluring,” she finishes Jasper's sentence.

“Yeah.” Jasper climbs onto the bed, “do you want me to touch you again?”

Peridot whines, embarrassed at the way Jasper speaks to her and looks at her with those hungry eyes. “What else can you do?”

“You mean, like powers? Everything is about touch and sight...” Jasper sits back on her heels, pushes hair behind her back and thinks about it. “What can you do?”

Peridot moves, climbs off the bed and hides underneath of it without answering Jasper.

“Peridot, are you going to hide or do you want to have sex?” Jasper rolls her eyes but all she gets is Peridot's hand coming up to the mattress to put her missing watch on the bed.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's editing?  
> I've been getting a lot of messages, and asks, and people who have just really mentioned liking this story. So, I decided why not write another chapter since it's been almost a year exactly since I've updated it. I can't promise I'm going to schedule out this fic and write it regularly. I can't even promise I'll write another chapter before December. But I'm glad you guys like this!!! So thanks for sticking with me and all of my insanity.

Six weeks into living with Jasper, Peridot had come up with a schedule of the daily routines of the people coming in and out of the house. The group of students came over almost every single day but only when there was a case or something of the utmost importance. They often stayed later into the nights and Peridot did her best to not interact with any of them. Pearl and Lapis were two of the people she’d sometimes interact with but when they were over; Peridot would normally be in the office with Jasper because she felt safer near the woman even though the two hadn’t known each other long.

It’s where Peridot was right now, in Jasper’s office with her pants around her ankles and her shirt hanging off a nearby lamp. She was rather cold, and dazed; thinking about how her relationship with Jasper had quickly turned sexual and she’s sure it started in the kitchen and somehow worked its way to a normal part of their life. Sometimes it was Peridot who came to Jasper and would ask, and sometimes she’d just wake Jasper up much earlier than normal by touching her. If anyone knew them, they’d assume Peridot was the succubus. A big part of it, and Jasper has explained this on many occasions, were her powers. Some people were more susceptible to her than others. Peridot was that lucky one who could feel her entire body weaken around the succubus, and feel herself get so wet and sensitive until it hurt. It didn’t stop until Jasper touched her or until she was out of sight.

Constantly wanting Jasper was the worst part because of all the students and all the other employees coming in and out of the place. It’s the reason for the schedules she drew up because without them, they wouldn’t have had longer than five or ten minutes without a distraction. It was bad enough Lapis has walked in on them twice, but the students had manners and they always had a few minutes to clean up and get settled when it came to them. 

“You need to get dressed.” Jasper tells her, buttoning her pants. 

Peridot whines, “no. Dress me for me.” Peridot sometimes acted like a child and it suited her; but if any other grown creature started whining to do stuff for her, Jasper would have clocked them.

“I have things to do. You’re the one who came down and threw yourself on me.” 

Peridot whines again, she had no idea what came over her when she woke up but the first thing she did was come into Jasper’s office, climb into her lap and kiss her. It followed up with knocking everything off Jasper’s desk, laying down on said desk, and Peridot being fucked on that desk which is what she was still lying on. She couldn’t help it, she was living in a home with the energy of a succubus and it impacted her far more than she ever thought possible. She wakes up thinking about Jasper touching her, pushing her down and having sex with her wherever they are. It often makes her uncomfortable with how much she wants to touch herself at just the thought. 

“I guess I could be to blame.” Jasper reaches a hand forward for Peridot to grab, pulling her to sit up. “Pearl’s bringing some paperwork over and the kids have finals so it’s hopefully just you and me. Do you want to go somewhere?” 

“It’s too cold.” She shivers.

“It’s winter.” Jasper chuckles, moving to grab Peridot’s shirt and handing it over to her.

“I miss my cave. It never got this cold. It was all warm and damp and nice.” 

“Well, if you wear heavier clothing and didn’t try to steal the thermostat, maybe it would be warm here.” 

“It was shiny.” 

“It was broken. You should be glad Bismuth fixed it.” 

“She’s weird. Very loud. Why is everyone so loud?” She fumbles with the shirt, trying to get it over her head but it becomes stuck on her horns. 

“Well, you have extremely sensitive hearing.” Jasper helps untangle the fabric from her horns, and Peridot finishes by pulling it across her chest and down to her waist. “I don’t understand why you wear clothes when it’s just you and me. Is it because it’s cold? I thought your kind could grow extra scales to endure the weather.” 

“Exactly. It’s just you and me. I know how you are.” She squints, pulling her pants off her ankles so she can shake them out before putting them back on. “And, I can but then I’d just end up shedding them off and it’s a process to regrow all of them back.”

Jasper had never seen a dragon do more than speak to her before. She was learning some facts about dragon’s that she had only heard of and now knew were true. “You do know you barely know me, right?”

“I know that you’re a succubus and if I walked around in my glorious dragon skin, you’d just try to sleep with me.”

“Well, isn’t that what you’re doing with the clothes already on?” Jasper teases, beginning to pick up the papers and folders that had fallen onto the floor. She puts them onto a spare chair before grabbing some wipes to clean off her desk. Trying to make it look like she didn’t just fuck someone in her office; not that it mattered. She comes closer to Peridot after throwing the paper towels in her waste bin. "You know, if you didn't wear clothes it'd just be much easier for us. Less time taking off your clothes and more time slipping my fingers inside of you and..." She chuckles, pressing a kiss at the corner of Peridot's mouth. 

“Pearl’s here.” Peridot changes the conversation, blushing as she pulls her shirt over the pants she’s wearing and goes to open the office door for the woman to enter before leaving herself. 

Jasper finishes cleaning up before Pearl takes a seat, watching Jasper toss all the papers and folders onto her desk in a messy pile. Some of them falling off and Jasper shrugs, leaving it there. Pearl adds another one, a much larger file that’s locked with a tie around it. She takes a seat after setting it onto the table, looking at Jasper who glances over the folder before looking up at Pearl. There was something on her face that should concerned, and resentment. “I had someone dig into Yellow’s sales.” She speaks, Jasper looks up at her immediately. 

“I don’t know why you’re snooping around in business that doesn’t pertain to you.” Jasper takes a seat in her chair, grabbing her coffee cup on the small file drawer next to her and taking a sip. It had become cold from sitting there so long and rather bitter. She takes another sip. “What does this have to do with Lapis or the case?” 

“It has to do with that dragon. She has documented photos and records of prior sales of that dragon. She’s been trying to get rid of her for some time now, and I guess it’s not a coincidence you bought her.”

“I don’t want to hear anything unless it’s about our current case, Pearl. What did you and Lapis find?” 

“You can’t seriously be ignoring all of the proof that Yellow is using you for something. Maybe it’s because of the vote coming up and she doesn’t want to get caught if her place is raided for illegal activity. Dragons are rare, she knows you as a succubus are incredibly…Potent,” she can’t think of a better word, “and it might take some time but you could help produce more dragons.”

“Stop it. I don’t care what her reason for selling Peridot to me was. She is legally mine, and I’ve gone through all the documents and they are all real 

Pearl continues her rant. “And you want children. You’ve been with a countless number of people in your life and have never produced a healthy child out of any of those relationships. Maybe that’s why you’ve been buying and selling rare creatures with her for all those years. Things didn’t go well with Lapis, and so you’re out there trying to do it again.”

“Either stop talking or leave my house.” She growls. 

Pearl locks eyes with Jasper. “Why won’t you talk to me about this? You haven’t trusted anyone in such a long time but suddenly you trust Yellow and this dragon whom you’ve just met. I just wish you would talk to me about this.”

“I don’t really appreciate your concern, and it’s not your decision to make.” 

“And what happens if Yellow is just using you and in six months, police raid your house and-”

“Why are you so worried?” Jasper regrets asking the question almost immediately. 

“Someone has to be. Dragons are incredibly rare and no one just comes up out of the blue and offers to sell you one. Not unless they have something to hide. What if this all turns out to be too good to be true? What if it’s some sort of scheme and Peridot is in on it, too?” 

“Can we just talk about Lapis?” Jasper rummages through the folders on her desk until she reorganizes them just enough to find the file she had on Lapis. She had detailed paperwork of what was happening at her work, what she had been hearing about happen in the ocean, and the experience Peridot and she had together. It was all circumstance evidence, even if Lapis tried suing them or shutting the place down it would end with her in a lot more trouble than the company. Another issue on top of everything was, what was in the water? What did Peridot hear? Why was she able to and Lapis, who lives in the water was unable to? Jasper finally finds the folder, and gives it to Pearl. 

“We went back into the water together and…I saw something shining in the darkness.” She opens the file, skimming through the papers. “But, it was impossible because light can reach beyond a certain level under the ocean.” Pearl has a bad habit of trying to give possibilities for the impossible. A way to make sense of something that doesn’t. “Lapis went down to get the item and she brought it back and she was…Unreasonably angry.” 

“What did she find?” 

“A rock.” Pearl says as she stands up, setting the folder on her chair and beginning to rearrange Jasper’s folders for her until everything was neatly in its place. “You really shouldn’t leave your office like this. I’ll clean it for you.” She moves over to the file cabinet to put away a few of the folders and picks up the others on the ground. 

“What was the rock?” 

“I think you need a new filing system.”

“Pearl, what was the rock?” Jasper repeats. 

Pearl looks at her and bites her lip before giving in. “Fine. It was malachite.” 

Jasper purses her lips, giving herself a moment to think. “Are you trying to tell me Malachite is in our waters?" 

“I mean, I don’t know if it is her! She fits all the criteria for what has been happening." She opens the second filing cabinet. "And from what you have told me, she’s completely toxic under water. I have no idea why anyone would even let her in the water let alone the ocean. It’s not like we can just jump in and stop her. If it is Malachite, we could have you and Lapis try and catch her and bring her out of the water. She’s too unstable under there.” She finally takes a breath after rambling “you need to talk to Lapis about her. You need to do something about this if Malachite is the problem."

“How do you expect me to see Malachite after all of the years and expect her to forgive me and Lapis for locking her up? That Lapis and I both failed as parents because we were unable to contain the sort of power she had?” Jasper doesn’t like thinking about her past relationship with Lapis or the child they had together. She loved her daughter, but the wreckage she caused was more than they could handle together. “I don’t need to think about this right now. I need a drink.” 

Jasper gets up from her chair, clings to the coffee cup still in her hand and leaves her office. She doesn’t want to think about mistakes she has made her in past, let alone mistakes Lapis made that she was forced to be a part of. If she had a choice, she would have kept her daughter protected in her own home but raising the child was a completely different story. Malachite was both of her parents put together, she had recessive traits of Lapis’ ancestors, and the height, build, and strength of Jasper times ten. The powers Malachite possessed were much stronger and volatile and lack of control of them made them incredibly dangerous. They tried to bind her powers when she was still young, but Malachite found out what they were trying to do to her and refused. The only things they could do were keep her away from water, but the lack of control made Malachite herself grow unstable. 

The only thing they could do was to lock her up somewhere close where Jasper could still see her daughter every day. And Malachite’s resentment grew stronger, her powers grew stronger, and she broke free one day. Jasper hadn’t seen her since but had heard many stories of her active powers causing chaos. She wanted to protect her child, and in the end, she had to protect herself. Jasper hates thinking about it but forces herself to remember the pain she had gone through during this time. She could feel how much her daughter loved her, but hated her for what she had done. 

She heads into the kitchen to grab a clear bottle from her liquor cabinet, dumping her coffee cup into the sink and grabbing a clear glass from the cabinet. She fills the cup completely, takes a drink, and refills what she had already drank before putting the bottle away and heading back down the hall. When Jasper walks into the hallway, from this direction she can see shadows decorating the hallway back and forth. When she looks up, she can see what is causing the chandelier to swing. “How the fuck did you get up there?” Jasper asks, taking a long sip from her glass because she feels like she needs it. 

“I climbed.” Peridot replies, holding on tighter as she's afraid to fall. 

“Are you stuck?” Jasper stifles her laughter.

“No.” She lies.

“Just let go and I’ll catch you.” 

"No you won't! People always say that they will catch you, and they never do. You're going to drop me and I'm going to be a dragon pancake."

"I won't miss or drop you. Come on, let go."

“I think I’m going to live up here now. You know, this is my new home. Ow.” She moves her arm away as the light begins to burn her arm.

“Pearl!” Jasper calls the woman who is still in her office. “How on earth did you climb up there?” 

“Well, at first I was scaling the banister. I was getting sort of bored waiting for you to come out. Then, I fell. This is what I grabbed onto.”

Pearl comes out of the office and looks at Jasper and then up at the chandelier. She doesn't even bother asking how it happened because ever since Peridot came into their lives, things have been disappearing and breaking and they've called Bismuth one too many times to come and fix things. 

“Can you get the ladder for me?” Jasper asks Pearl and the woman nods in response. “You know you're a dragon, right? Can’t you fly?” 

“Will you stop stereotyping all dragons? No, I cannot. And I am currently very afraid, so can you please get me down?"

“A dragon that can’t fly and is afraid of heights. Huh.” She takes another swig. 

“I mean, I can fly but it’s not like in all of the stories where you see giant winged creatures flying around. Some can probably do that, but I can’t. I can fly small distances but I can’t fly over a building or up in the sky. You do remember I’m not a fully matured dragon, right? My wings aren’t capable of handling that much weight.” She whimpers when the wires in the chandelier drop due to the weight. "And, I'm not afraid of heights. You're telling me you wouldn't be afraid trapped on top of a swinging weapon of death?"

“First, you steal everything in my house that is shiny or that you like and hoard it underneath my bed, and then you break the thermostat and my chandelier.” Jasper mutters as Pearl comes back into the hallway with the ladder. Setting it up to help Peridot down from the chandelier. She clings to Pearl, nearly knocking her down off the ladder and the moment she’s back on the ground again she scampers off like a cat. 

Jasper and Pearl just watch her. 

“Do you want me to call Bismuth again?” Pearl questions. 

“Yes. Ask her if she wants to move in, too. I think she might need to."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shrug.

The next two weeks go by excruciating slowly because Jasper refuses to take any new clients and pushes any of her old clients onto other lawyers who need the work. She believed it was Pearl’s fault for bringing up Malachite, and her own fault for not being able to deal with the emotions that came with it. Thinking about her past, what happened with Malachite, the possible life she could have had made the self-loathing tendencies come more and more to the surface. Bringing up old wounds around Lapis was simply asking for a fight, so she kept to herself, and kept to Peridot who had finally become used to the daily activities of the students and employees of the home. 

It was obvious that something was bothering Jasper, and the reason why was because of her powers as a succubus. If someone tried to touch her, they could feel the emotions running through her and would immediately be affected by grief and anger, or any other heavy emotions she was emitting. Peridot was increasingly susceptible to those powers, but she often came to Jasper anyway because she wouldn’t allow anyone else to. The students had rarely been seen in the house because of school, and break had started just two days ago. Jasper personally asked Pearl to stay away just for a few days—even though the woman had not listened and was in the office—and continue her own research on cases that had been previously put on hold due to the courts and holiday breaks. She used that time to relax, try and keep her mind off things and debates how she should use her short vacation. 

A few ideas go through her mind but she heavily debates going back home to the queen and her courts. She thinks about it a lot because she misses the queen, she misses the life she had in her kingdom before she decided to go off on her own a few hundred years ago. She loves the life she made for herself though, and she really loved helping people, but with these mixed up emotions she doesn’t know what she wants anymore. She once wanted a family and a life of her own, and while she once had it, she was never really satisfied. It’s why she’s been on the mission for so long; trying to help other creatures continue their bloodline, but she had never been successful in that either. 

Her life with Lapis had never been a relationship. How they created Malachite was through their own powers and not through natural reproduction methods. The two had been in a bad situation, and the situation created its own life and at first things were fine. They tried to make a relationship worked for the sake of what they had created but everything between them was so toxic that it could never be stable enough for it to work. They somehow remained friends after taking the necessary time apart after things with Malachite had gone south. She swears at herself because was thinking about it again, and she knew she had to stop because if she said anything, then people would ask and it was the last thing she wanted to talk about.

Jasper tries not to think about it, desperately wants to focus on something else but the only thing she could focus on—if not her work—was Peridot. The dragon was still a mystery to her and was currently pacing the halls because she wanted to go outside and couldn’t. It had started snowing in the early morning, turning to rain, and then back into snow. The weather had been all over the map for the past few days, and all Peridot could do was groan and moan about how she hated the cold weather. Jasper would explain the reasoning behind it; the dragon in her was cold-blooded and she couldn’t successfully stabilize her body temperature. Peridot hissed in reply and went back to pacing because it kept her warm. 

“Are you hungry?” Jasper calls from bedroom when she sees Peridot pass by. 

“No.” She turns around and walks the other way, continuing to pace up and down the hall. 

Jasper notices her legs getting used to the concept of walking. “I can turn the heater up if you’re still cold. You could also come lay in bed.” She grumbles something and Jasper can’t hear what she is saying. “What did you say?” 

“I’m fine!” She grumbles again, this time talking to herself as if she’s angry about something.

“Peridot, will you come here?” 

“No.” She replies quietly, scuttling her feet down the hall. 

“Peridot.” Jasper speaks more adamantly and she hears Peridot’s feet quit moving.

Peridot walks over to the door and peeks into the bedroom. At first glance, Jasper’s was fully clothed and that made her a bit more comfortable. 

“Come closer.” 

She hesitates before coming into the bedroom, moving over to the bed and climbing onto it. Jasper had been in the middle of reading some paperwork Pearl had sent her for a case and her bed was littered with different papers. Peridot crumbles them when she sits on the bed, trying to pull them out from under her and tossing them on the floor. 

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She picks up another piece of paper, squinting as she tries to read it and tosses it onto the floor. 

“Stop.” Jasper gently smacks her hand. “Are you mad?”

“You’re mad; not me. Aren’t you the succubus?” 

Jasper moves from her bed to pick up the papers, “I keep forgetting that happens to you. It must be because your powers aren’t fully developed. You know, I could teach you how to resist them.” The way Jasper speaks doesn’t sound sexual, but Peridot know exactly what her intentions are. 

“Are you avoiding what’s wrong?” Peridot replies, while ignoring Jasper’s approval to have sex with her. 

“Yes. But wouldn’t having sex with me make you feel better?” 

Peridot whines, and then groans, making a few other noises in the process. It wasn’t that Peridot didn’t want to, it would just be nice if Jasper would warn her before pushing her down and having sex with her some nights. Just like this morning, when Peridot had woken up and could feel that desire deep in her core. Jasper pulled the covers off the bed and slipped her mouth in between Peridot’s thighs and Peridot just blushes from thinking about it. 

“Well, I don’t know what that means. Do you want to use real words?” She asks, laying the papers on top of each other and pushing Peridot over—who hisses at her for doing so—to a clear spot on the bed to pick up all her paperwork. She sets it on her dresser before sitting back on her bed. 

She shakes her head. 

“Look, the only way you’re going to survive in this house until your powers grow is if you learn to adapt to my powers.”

“Apparently having sex with you is my only option. Nice.” She glares at Jasper.

“I didn’t mean it that way. There are other ways, but physically pushing my powers into you is the only way you can really learn to protect yourself from them. It’s like when you have children and keep them inside to be healthy and clean and you don’t let them outside. All you’re really doing is fucking over their auto-immune system so when they do finally get to go outside or are finally exposed to a cold or a flu, they get extremely sick.” 

Peridot just blinks at her.

“You know nothing about humans, do you?”

She shakes her head as she lays down on the bed. “I have abilities that come from fae ancestry, and I’m very obviously a dragon. Between those two things, I’ve never had any contact with humans outside of the Steven. Sometimes the other students try to talk to me but if I hiss at them they go away.” She nods proudly. 

“He’s a sweet kid, not sure why he picked law but to each their own.”

“I still don’t know what ‘law’ is.”

“You didn’t have rules and laws growing up?”

“I had a rock.”

Jasper looks at her, reaches a hand out and presses it against her head. “Do you remember your family?”

“Nope.” She says it so simply that it almost shocks Jasper. “I don’t really remember anything. I’ve told you that before.” Jasper’s hand brushes against her horns and Peridot stares at her. “Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?”

She squints, “you know what.”

Jasper laughs, hand slipping into her short hair and her thumb rubbing circles against her scalp. The feeling makes Peridot quiet down, closing her eyes and relaxing into the feeling. “I’ll see if I can do anything to help you remember them. I’ll talk to Pearl.”

“Hey. What is she? I always thought she was an elf or something, but we were talking the other day and I’m pretty sure she used to be a princess? I keep hearing stories from everyone about her. Amethyst told me she used to have group orgies with servants and Lapis told me Pearl once killed a man with her thumb.”

“Pearl’s complicated. She doesn’t talk about her past and if you were lucky enough to be a part of it, she never lets you bring it up again.”

“You’re avoiding my question, per usual.” She moves closer to Jasper, wrapping an arm around her waist. 

“She used to be a queen who was living among our kind, and then she died and I saved her.”

“How’d you do that?”

“Creatures like me…We can use our own energy and return it to others. It takes a long time to recover from something like that but it’s possible. Like I said, Pearl’s complicated. You’d have to talk to her about it.” 

Peridot whines.

“Oh, will you shush.” She drops her other hand into Peridot’s hair, pressing near the base of her neck. “Your skin is oddly soft for having scales.”

“And you’re oddly annoying when I’m trying to sleep.”

“Does this make you tired?”

Peridot nods against Jasper’s chest. “A little turned on, too. You’re warm.”

There’s a knock on the outside of her bedroom door and Jasper looks up at the ajar door to see Pearl standing there. “Hey, we were just talking about you.”

“You know how I feel about that.” Pearl replies, “Lapis is here. I don’t know if you want me to tell that you’re busy or if you wanted to speak with her. I know you’ve been avoiding her.”

Jasper sighs, “can she just meet me somewhere?” She thinks for a while about how she can get out of that situation. She can lie, claim she was busy but Pearl knew her schedule and the fact she removed herself from all her cases. It was much harder to lie than it had been before.

“What do you want me to tell her? You know I don’t like being in the middle of these things.”

“Tell her I’ll set something up with her. When the students come back from their holiday because I do not want to deal with this right now. I still have a meeting with Yellow coming up and she wants to talk about the investigation and the lawsuit.”

“I’ll let Lapis know but this is the last time I’m being in the middle of you two.” Pearl wants to say so much more, but decides against it. Jasper is stubborn and arguing with her was getting so tiring for them both. 

“Thank you. I’ll be down soon, just shut the door for me.”

Jasper watches her shut the bedroom door and can feel sudden bouts of anger wash over her. Ever since the events that took place, their relationship had heavily suffered and nothing they did seemed to fix it. They still associated with each other and if Jasper needed Lapis to do something for her the two only would barter until they each got their own way. She’s tried to leave Lapis in her past so many times before, but she keeps dragging herself back to her. It was because of Malachite, because of what they created and what they’ve been through together.

“You need to stop.” Peridot speaks which makes Jasper scowl at her. “I can feel how you’re feeling right now and I do not like it. Go talk to Lapis about Malachite.” Peridot jabs her with a finger. 

“Have you been talking to her?” Jasper raises an eyebrow, curious about how Peridot had even heard Malachite’s name before.

“I have very good hearing.” 

“So, you’ve been eavesdropping?”

“I have very good hearing.”

“You’re annoying, you know that?” 

“And you’re a pompous asshole, but I guess we both have our flaws. Yours are just more prominent.”

Jasper laughs as she lays back down, watching the skies turn gray with a promise of more rain from her balcony. She sighs, “Lapis and I are complicated.” She tells Peridot, still thinking of what happened with them in the past. It wasn’t important to her, but those events all added up into one catastrophic event: Malachite.

“Everything with you is complicated.”

She shrugs, “it’s my fault. I push people far past their limits and I usually don’t care if they get hurt in the process.”

“Who is Malachite?” Peridot asks and Jasper turns to her. 

“So, you were listening.” Jasper thinks about her words carefully before explaining. There’s only so many ways she can tell the story but she does not want to go into heavy detail. Things between her and her friends had always been so complicated and she was the one who made them that way. She had issues trusting not only herself but other people. Most of the time she wished she could just stop working with people like Pearl and Lapis, but then she’d be alone again. 

“A really long time ago, Lapis and I were trapped together. We both blamed ourselves for the situation for different reasons but the entire time we were trapped, our anger and hatred for each other was so strong and in this place in which we were trapped, we created energy from our powers and feelings. That energy transformed into something real, it took on a life of its own and became someone. We named her Malachite and took her in as somewhat of a daughter of ours.” 

“What happened to her?”

“She isn’t a person. Her entire physical being is completely unstable and she can’t survive outside of water and without anger to fuel what she was created from. Originally, we were going to destroy her, but I wouldn’t let them do it. But looking back, I know it was the wrong thing to do. I just really wanted to have a family again and I have never been able to have that without something terrible happening.” 

“You’ve got Pearl and your fancy ‘law’ kids. You technically own me, too.”

“There’s no technicalities yet. Dragons aren’t covered under the law and so they are legal to sell, trade, and own. After the vote, you’ll have to be permanently registered at a citizen which means I won’t own you anymore.”

“Wait, really?” Peridot sits up quickly and watches Jasper turn onto her back again.

“It happened when Malachite was created. She was legally allowed to be considered a citizen even though she was a creation. It’s why I thought there was a chance for her.”

“I can be registered?” She goes back to herself, ignoring what Jasper is saying. 

“Yes. I have the legal paperwork for you and even though I didn’t get you through legal channels, you still count.”

“Well, what happens if I’m registered?”

Jasper hums as she thinks, “you can legally buy me alcohol?”

Peridot huffs, pushing Jasper with her hands.

“The original proposal was if certain creatures deserved the right to be seen the same as more humanized ones. It was just a way to marginalize groups of magical beings for not being able to fit into society. The less human a creature is, the more the people in charge see them as just regular animals. At the end of the day, they see something like a dragon the same as they see a cat or a dog.”

“But why wasn’t Malachite considered that way?”

“She looks human, as inhuman as she is. And even though you can make yourself look human, they still had this idea of what a dragon’s form looked like. It’s what happened to harpies, elves, djinn, and so many other creatures. It’s different everywhere and it’s the reason most people don’t come to Earth and stay in their worlds.”

“I mean, technically I could turn into their opinion of what a dragon is.”

Jasper raises an eyebrow, “how technically are we talking?” 

Jasper sits up again, watching Peridot turn around at first. There was a layer of glamour over her, and it’s something Jasper found out when they first met. Without it, her scales were much more prominent and they shaped around her back where her wings would start. When the glamour is washed away, her wings pull away from her back and spread out around her. They take up the rest of her body, much larger than Jasper had thought they would be. Parts of them are the same green as the color of her scales, but the skin over her wing is a much lighter shade, almost translucent. 

“Don’t touch them.” 

Jasper leans forward, pressing her lips to the back of Peridot’s head. “Thank you,” she says, realizing that they have both begun to trust each other.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I still don't know what is happening in my own story. Shrug.

Peridot is staring at the television, confused and impressed by the array of colors displayed over the screen. She suddenly perks up when someone turns the television off, staring at a dark screen and confused how to turn it back on. She was in the middle of staring at a marathon of some cartoon that Jasper had put on for her while she had gone grocery shopping. Whatever it was, it was enough to keep her attention for two hours straight because Peridot wasn’t aware of the time until the television had been shut off.

“Looks like that vote passed.” A young woman speaks and it distracts Peridot from her frustration for just a moment. 

Peridot is curious who is talking but she’s rather angry at the television. She gets up, kicking the thing and then turns around to look the students who were speaking to one another. It was Connie and Steven, two of those law students that Peridot hadn’t even acknowledged because the television had distracted her for so long. She remembers Jasper letting her know that they would be stopping by to pick up some items, before they left on their holiday, but she was still apprehensive about it. She does remember in the past that Steven and Connie gave her come weirdly shaped candy that she enjoyed, so she tries to keep her fears to herself. 

“You know that’s really good for Jasper. She’s going to be getting a lot of new clients.” Steven replies, rummaging through the shelves for some textbooks. 

“You’re right about that, but cops are going to start scanning everyone in the city to make sure they are registered. People can still sell magical goods, just not actual creatures themselves anymore. It won’t stop people from doing it though. Especially if they creatures are young.” She replies, packing some things into a small box on the table. 

“What happens if they’re not documented?” Peridot asks. 

“I think they just serve you a notice. Like, a time and date of where to go to do it. I think they draw blood and scan your eye, and then you’re just added into the system.” She shrugs. “It seems really simple.”

“Yeah! I had to do it for school because I wasn’t documented in this state.” Steven chimes in and Peridot squints at him for being so loud. “You can talk to Jasper about it. I just saw her in the kitchen.”

Peridot leaves the lounge, walks down the hallway and into the kitchen but Jasper is not there, only paper bags she knocks over by accident. She huffs, taking a shiny spoon off the counter and putting it into her pocket before looking out back. The worst thing about being outside of her warm cave, was the weather. The rain had frozen over, and then it started snowing and everything was icy and cold and she just wanted to be warm. It’s why she was wearing a big sweater Jasper had given to her—mainly because she refused to wear socks or shoes—and had the heater up as high as it could go. 

Peridot decides to look out front for Jasper. She heads back down the hallway, passes the office and the lounge before she meets the front door which is opened. She hisses as she walks outside because of the cold breeze that touches her face and causes her to shiver even in the warmth of the sweater she’s wearing. The porch is clear of snow but it’s still damp and causes her feet to become even colder as she steps onto the grass. The grass was the biggest offender of being covered in snow. It was fresh, white, and Peridot wanted it to go away. She likes the way it crunches against her toes but not the way it feels and she jumps up and down onto the snow, stomping on it and leaving her footprints in a path.

“What are you doing out here?” Pearl asks her first and Jasper turns around to look at Peridot who shrugs in response. “You know, dragons are rather playful creatures but I didn’t think they would enjoy the snow.”

“I hate the snow!” Peridot shouts, stomping her feet into it again. “It’s cold and wet and I’m cold and my feet are wet.” She frowns. 

“So? Go inside if you don’t want to be cold and wet.” Jasper chuckles, shutting the car door and coming over to Peridot. 

Peridot stares at her, there’s something about her that looks different outside. Maybe it was the leopard print coat she was sporting, or the way the sun made her skin glisten, but she’s never noticed it before and it causes her to instantly become flustered. “You look so pretty.”

“Are you okay?” Jasper asks her and Peridot heads back inside immediately, almost slipping on the ice when she runs away. 

Peridot heads into the kitchen, grabbing a box she found in one of the bags—while proceeding to knock over another—and tears it open as she climbs onto the island. They were mini cheese crackers and Peridot eats one, chewing it as she watches the others come into the kitchen to set the rest of the bags down. She sits there, watching Jasper and Pearl put the items into the cabinets and steals another box right out of Pearl’s hands who protests. 

“What’s this? Can I eat it?” She brings the box closer to her mouth to chew on it. She growls at the taste of the plastic, tossing the box aside and Jasper catches it before it hits the ground.

“Are you hungry?” Jasper asks her.

Peridot thinks about it and Jasper takes the box of crackers she has on the island and closes it before putting it into the cabinet where it belongs. “Nope.”

“So, what exactly is your problem?” 

She huffs dramatically, “I’m really bored. I think I’m going to die of boredom.” 

“I thought you were watching television. I left it on for you.”

“It went dark and I don’t know how to work that contraption. Then those kids came over and were talking about the stupid vote and they didn’t even give me any candy this time.”

“I can turn it back on for you.” Pearl speaks.

Peridot turns to her, her eyes lighting up with excitement, “really?” 

“Yes. Why I can even show you how to do it.”

“Take me to the television!” Peridot announces, moving off the island by grabbing onto Pearl’s back.

Pearl struggles, trying to get Peridot to get off her back. It doesn’t work, her nails dig into her shoulder and her legs tighten around her waist and Pearl gives up, deciding to carry her to the living room. “You know you don’t pay me enough, right?” She mentions, not gaining a response because Jasper is laughing the entire time. “Did you just scratch me?” 

“Maybe I did scratch you, but can you prove it was me is the real question.” 

They leave the kitchen and Jasper finishes putting away the boxes, cleaning up the paper bags and makes herself a cup of coffee before coming to join them in the lounge. She sets her mug down on the glass coffee table, takes a seat on the sofa and watches Peridot who has finally learned what channel surfing means. It’s quiet with Peridot watching the television, the sound isn’t very loud because it bothers her ears but it keeps her attention for Jasper to relax. She needs it after the caseload she’s had for the past year, for all the shit she’s had to deal with with Lapis. The woman had been texting her since early this morning to ask about her case against Aqua Marina. Jasper just didn’t respond to her; she didn’t know how to respond. 

Jasper shifted her focus completely to her house and to Peridot. Sure, it made Pearl frustrated and Lapis angry, but it made her feel better. 

“Hey Jasper?” 

“Hm?” 

“What is this?” She gets up, walking over to the couch and taking a seat next to Jasper. 

“It’s an infomercial.”

“What’s that mean?” She pulls her legs against her, pulling the sweater over them.

“It’s a televised advertisement to sell you something.” 

“Can I have it?”

“That depends.” Jasper speaks, grabbing her mug to take a sip of coffee and setting it back down. “Do you have money?” 

She shrugs, “I have a rock.” She puts her hand into her pocket, pulling out the spoon she stole. “Can I use this?” 

“No. And I think we need to have another talk about you stealing things again.” She takes the spoon, setting it down on the table. “Why don’t you just use your bedroom to put whatever you want in there?” 

“It’s too cold in there. I did like your room, but someone took all of my stuff.” 

“My bed is not your hoarding grounds. You cannot stick stuff underneath it and expect it to be fine and dandy. You took my cellphone and it took me a day to find underneath all of that junk.” Peridot is pouting as Jasper talks, crossing her arms around herself. “I understand that it’s shiny and you want it, but you can’t just keep taking things. I can get you a heater for the bedroom, and some different insulation.”

“Why can’t I share your room?” 

“I-I don’t know. Do you want to?” 

“Well, you’re in it and you’re warm.” 

“Yeah, but it’s a thousand degrees in there because you keep turning up the heat. I don’t understand how you’ve survived this long if your body is this sensitive to cold.”

“My scales and skin aren’t really thick enough to handle cold weather. Most younger dragons hibernate in the colder months.” Peridot makes a sound when Jasper to pull her against her chest. Jasper’s hands are hot against her own, her skin is so much warmer and Peridot could fall asleep against her if she really wanted to. “You’re so warm.” 

“Always am. It’s a succubus thing.” 

“Good. Just keep being a succubus, but now you have to hold me until winter is over.”

A blizzard hits a few days later and Jasper decides to allow Peridot to stay in her cave until the warmer weather returns. Her bodies inability to process the cold worries Jasper much more than she lets on, but for the next four months she only sees Peridot when she goes to her cave to visit. Peridot’s often asleep when Jasper visits but when she is awake, the confine space causes Jasper’s powers to have a greater impact on her than in her roomy home. Sometimes it makes it harder for Peridot to be around her, but she’s beginning to become accustomed to the hard punch that the energy has on her. 

It’s not like Peridot doesn’t enjoy Jasper’s body against her own; the deep thrusts inside of her, the way she fills her and so easily coaxes orgasms out of her body. Those things had become normal and made her feel complete in a sense. What she didn’t enjoy was being alone in her cave. She had become used to being around Jasper all day and night, but now the succubus only spent a few nights a week with her and rarely came by during the day. She even sort of missed Pearl. 

The winter was rather lonely for her, but the spring approached and the summer-like weather quickly followed and Peridot was relieved to be back in the house again. Most of the time she thought about lying outside in the grass and letting the sun beat down against her, but it often rained so she stayed inside the house on most days. She has noticed that inside the house nothing had really changed except Jasper was more focused on her work now that she had more clients coming in, and the students were still gone because it was, ‘spring break.’ Peridot still has no idea what that is. 

The second week she’s back in the house, Pearl sets up an appointment for her to be scanned for the registry. It’s not as stressful as Peridot assumes it will be, but she’s lazy and doesn’t want to put the slightest bit of effort into anything. Ever since she came back she’s felt lethargic and all she wants to do is sleep because the house is still a little bit colder than she wants it to be. Because of this, she spends her time lying by the opened windows and letting the sun keep her warm. 

Pearl is forced to come and physically obtain her because she refuses to move from her spot. “I just need you to sit up and look straight ahead.” Pearl instructs her and Peridot frowns, whining because she does not want to move. “It will only take a minute.”

Peridot doesn’t move, she simply stares at Pearl for a little while longer. “Get me more blankets.” 

“No.”

Peridot squints, “then I guess I’ll just go back to sleep.”

“I’ll give you one more blanket if you get up.” 

Peridot thinks about it, “two more.” 

“One more.”

“Twenty more.” She nods.

“Fine. You can have two.”

Peridot doesn’t sit up until Pearl produces said two blankets. Peridot reorganizes her blankets and pillows, knocking some cotton onto the ground from a pillow she tore up in the process. “Okay. All ready.” Another woman comes into the room and Peridot finds herself staring at her this time. She’s taller than Pearl but shorter than Jasper, has a thick set of curls that Peridot wants to climb onto and take a nap, and is absolutely stunning but Peridot can’t let her know she thinks that. 

“What’s this register thingy do anyway?” She asks, getting up from her seat—after putting her pillow down—and coming over to them. 

“It tells us if you’re registered or not as a citizen. If you’re not, there’s a lot of paperwork and it takes some time. I just want Jasper to be ahead of everything.” Pearl sighs. 

“You want me to do what?” Jasper speaks when she comes into the lounge.

“Be on top of any paperwork.” 

“I’m already on top of everything I need to be on top of.” Jasper smirks.

Pearl drops her face into a hand, “Garnet, can you please?” 

The woman comes over and Peridot stares at her. She hasn’t said anything the entire time she’s been in the room, and the only thing Peridot can ever sense from her is the metal device in her hand and the scent of burnt paper from her clothing. She was a police officer, Peridot was very aware of that because of the shiny badge on the loop of her pants and Peridot wants to take it. She tries to control herself because as Jasper put it, ‘stealing is a crime’.

“Look at me.” She speaks, and Peridot can’t help but do exactly what she says because she makes Peridot so nervous. There’s something about the depth of her voice and how simply she speaks that does something to her. The machine lets out a red light that scans across her eye, it doesn’t burn or hurt but the color gets ingrained her in vision for a few seconds afterward. There’s a beep on another device and she watches Garnet look over it. “She’s good.” Peridot reaches her hand out, trying to take the device from Garnet and after a few failed attempts she grabs it.

“Who is this guy?” She asks as she reads a name on the file that is linked to hers. She squints again, trying to read the words but there are far too many of them and they cause her to become quite exhausted by the second sentence. She hands the device back and goes back to her laying down.

“The weather has been a little odd lately.” Pearl speaks, trying to apologize for Peridot’s behavior.

“Dragons emotional states are better in warmer weather. The warmth is familiar to them and it brings all sorts of odd behavior from them. You don’t need to apologize for her.” Everyone in the room—except for Peridot—is comfortable with the fact that Garnet knows that Peridot is a dragon. Peridot assumes she can read minds, some sort of psychic ability because she looks rather normal besides the sunglasses she’s sporting. Garnet skims the paragraph. “His name is Seong Tae Woo.” Garnet glances over his information before chuckling, “and your paths just keep on crossing.” Garnet speaks to herself, holding out the machine for Jasper to look. “Look who it is. Your favorite defense attorney.” 

Jasper peeks at the information. “Seriously? He’s married to Zarah?” 

“He’s been married four times but only two of them are listed. The others aren’t registered so it’s either because they were afraid of being outed, or because it was before the registry existed.”

“Doesn’t the registry tell you what he is?”

“Not everyone. It does tell me the date people registered on though. His was around the creation of the device, and hers was last year. I can check other country records for you. Maybe I can find a timeline for you, but for now I need to get back to the office.” 

“That would be good because I honestly don’t remember anything that happened before I met Jasper.” Peridot shrugs, trying to get comfortable in her seat again.

Jasper nods, “I’ll deal with all of this later. I need to head to the court house, meet Yellow for lunch, and then murder Lapis.” 

Garnet chimes in as she sets the scanner on her belt loop. “I did not hear that.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey...We're like half way there...Cool.

Jasper’s schedule was always a mess, and she mainly blames it on her lack of organization skills—it’s why she hired Pearl in the first place—it’s why she was late for her court meeting, late for her lunch meeting, but early with her meeting with Lapis. She’s always been a little scattered brained when it came to her work if she had something troubling her, and lately she’s always had something troubling her. Normally it all stemmed from her own issues, but she barely spoke about her own issues. Pearl was the only person who knew about what was bothering her before Peridot came into her life. Now that she had Peridot, Pearl was being slowly pushed out of the picture and Jasper knew it was causing her stress. 

Jasper manages to save her case at the court because of a judge that had decided to go easy on her. He understood having a rough day, especially with all the shit that’s been going on with her and arraignment was quick and painless. It was for a case that Jasper took just out of respect for the family, trying to save their child from going to jail for longer than six months was not an easy task. Being a lawyer was not an easy task, the schooling and stress she went through just to get where she was now was exhausting. She always thought about stopping her practice and going into private detective work, or even becoming a professor with her masters but it’s because she wanted a more open schedule and less stress than she was willing to put up with. 

Being alive for a few thousand years certainly put a strain on most of her personal relationships, but the drinking helped. Whoever said it didn’t was lying. 

While quitting her law practice wasn’t the most ideal thing she could do, she didn’t know what else she could do. Her life revolved around helping people and not helping herself. What she wanted in life wasn’t what she had in it. She wanted a genuine family like people see in old movies in television. She wanted children, she wanted a wife, and she wanted something to call her home that wasn’t filled with graduate students and constant stress. Every single time she thinks she can reach that goal, she holds herself back from reaching it and takes ten steps back to where she was at the start. Maybe it was fear that drove her to do this to herself because if she truly succeeded, she’d have nothing left she’d want in life.

Her lunch meeting with Yellow was rather short. Instead of the normal lunch where they would speak about business, it became all about the vote and how it was putting a damper on her business. Yellow was still going to continue her trades—no matter the turn out of the vote—and even offered to sell Jasper some fertility potions that she had confiscated off a witch. Jasper had to decline. She knew using magic for personal gain could lead to dire consequences and the last thing she wanted was future children to become like Malachite again. She did buy something shiny for Peridot however, this little silver chalice that’s rim is covered in jade and emerald stones. 

Yellow cuts the lunch short because an important client contacts her, and the short lunch gives her time to head home and relax before heading out to the beach. It wasn’t something she was looking forward to because on their own the two only ever argued. It was always about something small that became a huge fight, and then they wouldn’t speak for years. Jasper regrets always agreeing to help her, and just being a part of her world causes her more grief. It’s why she’s glad she has Peridot at home. As childish as she may be, her personality is a big upgrade from Lapis who always seems so bitter all the time. She invites Peridot to come with her because she wants something to cancel out all that anger. Peridot was a good conduit, and she really wanted to play in the sand. 

Jasper sits in the sand, waiting for nearly an hour for Lapis to arrive. During this time, Peridot has given her a collection of shells she absolutely must have for her cave and Jasper has her put them in a plastic bucket so she doesn’t forget them. When it fills up too high, Jasper leaves the beach to put them in her car because Peridot refuses to forget something so important as her seashells. Sometimes when Jasper looks at Peridot, she wishes she can go back to a time where she still had some innocence left. How she looks at the world and the people in it now, is not the same as she did when she was young. She was never naïve, never thought she deserved more than what she was given, and was always obedient to her queen and the people of her land. She was used to being what her queen wanted her to be and what the queen’s sister wanted her to be. It’s why she left in the first place, to discover herself and live a life outside of the strict societal rules she was once part of. Sometimes she even wonders how Peridot’s life was before Yellow had taken her, if she had to live to the same standards as others. It was unfortunate that she might never know more about her.

Sitting there and watching the ocean was relaxing for her sometimes, but on days where the tide was high and pulled into the beach farther away…Those were the days that scared her. There was always a voice in her head telling her to stay away—for fear of what Lapis did to them before—but she needed to face her fears. She wanted to stand up to Lapis, stand up to the waters that once trapped her, and move on with her life. 

Lapis is late meeting with Jasper, she swims up to the shoreline and Jasper watches the deep blue of her skin fade into a more natural, human shade. She stares at Jasper for just a moment, walking over to her and stumbling just a bit. Changing her tail back into legs had always taken a while to get used to again, no matter how many times Lapis had done it. She grabs a small towel that was on resting on the beach, rummaging into the bag underneath it and grabbing her top, tying that around her back and neck before stepping back into her skirt. She doesn’t say anything while she does this, but comes over to sit next to Jasper after she’s dressed. “Why’d you bring her?” Lapis asks, looking over to Peridot who looks to be in the middle of building a sand castle. It makes her question how long Jasper has been here waiting for her. 

Jasper shrugs, “she wanted to come. It was too cold in the house.”

Lapis just accepts her response, looking back out to her home. The sun was beginning to set but with gray forcing its way between the oranges, reds and yellows, even the waves were becoming more violent with the promise of a storm afoot. “Why have you been avoiding me? I know you spoke to Pearl but it’s been almost six months.”

“I’ve gotten your messages about the netting and boats, the toxic water levels, and everything else you’ve sent me. I just didn’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“About what specifically?” She watches the tide come in, the water touches her feet and retreats. 

“About Malachite.” The moment she says the name Lapis looks at her and the anger on her face is very real. “Pearl’s theory is that it’s Malachite. We talked about it, and she showed me evidence that I believe might..." She stops speaking without finishing her sentence.

“Why do you believe her? She's done nothing good for you before, and ever since you brought Peridot into your house, she's been even more distant and jealous. She's probably lying to you.”

“What else am I supposed to believe? We’ve been tossing around concepts such as serpents and creatures from hundreds of thousands of years ago. That’s exactly what she is. Malachite is the embodiment of us, she’s something we created together-”

“You think I don’t know that?” Lapis shouts. “I was there when it happened!”

“You know there’s a reason why I don’t talk to you, right? Because whenever we try to talk about this, and I try to tell you how I feel…” She stops for a moment, looking back at Peridot who had paid no mind to their argument. “Whenever I try to tell you how I feel, you push me away and refuse to talk about it.”

“Because you only use me when you need me; when you want me to feel sorry for you.”

“No, because you refuse to accept that what happened between us was your fault. Do you acknowledge you’re the one to blame? Yes. But when it comes down it, you blame me just as much as I blame myself and everyone around us blames me. Suddenly I become the bad guy just because I put us in the situation, but you’re the one who fucked everything up.”

“I was angry. You shouldn’t have-”

“Shouldn’t have what? Been allowed to leave?”

“Shut up.” Lapis groans, wanting the woman to stop talking. She debates just heading back into the ocean, it looks so much more inviting than the sound of Jasper shouting at her.

“No. That’s the funny thing, you can’t make this all go away by telling me to stop talking. You wanted to talk to me, you’re the one who kept messaging me and trying to make things right. You know how I feel about being out in those waters, and you pulled be right back in.”

“I didn’t think she would take it this far!” 

“She’s us, Lapis. She’s all my anger with all your power. I don’t understand why you think that wouldn’t be unstable.” 

“Will you just stop?! I messed up. I know that I messed up but all you ever do is remind me of that.”

“Because everyone blames me.” It took Jasper such a long time to rebuild the trust her friends once had with her. It was her anger that caused people to blame her for what had happened but she refused to let people blame her for it. She did what was necessary to keep her friends close, but what happened wasn’t her fault and never let people forget it. 

“It’s not my fault people blame you.” Lapis stands up, straightening her skirt out and shaking the wet sand off it.

“But it is. Did you ever tell them it was your fault? That you’re the one who wouldn’t let me out?”

Lapis doesn’t answer the question. 

“I thought not.”

“I knew trying to talk to you would be a mistake. You’re never going to understand that we had to stay because of Malachite.”

“Malachite wouldn’t have been created if it wasn’t for you!” Jasper shouts. “We could have worked together to heal Malachite. We could have stopped her.”

“Will you just let it go?” Lapis crosses her arms.”

“No. You asked me for my help with your case and I helped you. You can’t just tell me to drop it and pretend that we don’t need to talk about this.”

“Because I’m done talking about it! I’ve spent too long thinking about her, about what I did to you and I’m tired of thinking about it. I just want things to go back to how they were before it happened. And I know that can never happen but I still wish it would.” 

“You should have thought about that years ago.”

The worst part about the two of them when they were together was that their anger was down their downfall. 

Lapis is about to say something else but the waves crash against the shore and something reaches out behind her, grabbing at Jasper’s limbs. It drags her hard against the sand, pulling her towards the water. She doesn’t have time to react, tries to claw at the sand but hits the ocean before she can call for help. Lapis hesitates, watching the woman pulled under water and doing nothing to stop it from happening. She was caught by surprise by the situation, not knowing who or what had just taken her from the warmth of the sand, to the unforgiving depths of the seas. She decides to go in after her. 

For a split second, Jasper can see Malachite. The splices of light coloring in the darkness of her sea-foam green skin, the feline shape to her eyes, and the wicked grin she always had covering her face were just the more notable features of her. Malachite was the creature she once felt honored to call her daughter through even the worst of times. But now, the creature meant nothing to her. She was just the creation of power and anger, and it wasn’t what Jasper wanted in her life. But, it didn’t matter to her anymore. There’s no fight left in Jasper the moment she hits the ocean. She lets herself sink, lets that force drag her body as far down as it’s willing to take her. The ocean paralyzes her with complete fear, and it is Lapis who comes to save her from it. 

“Jasper, we have to go!” Lapis shouts as she tugs at the woman’s arm, trying to get her out of the waters. 

Jasper blinks, looking at Lapis and nods. “Where’s Peridot?” She asks as Lapis helps her onto the sand. When she is finally standing strong, she looks over to where Peridot once, ropes of water suddenly wrapping around her. She watches the dragon struggle, being knocked onto the sand and pulled down to the edge of the water just like she had been. But Jasper doesn’t even move, she wouldn’t know what to do even if she did move. She used to be a fighter, her body the result of the battles and wars she once fault, but outside of her powers of a succubus—which had no impact on Malachite—she believed herself to be weak and useless. 

Instead of helping she just watches Peridot, struggling to break out of Malachite’s grip but it doesn’t work. The woman just laughs in response to her struggling. “You think I couldn’t hear all of your endless fighting, but I did.” She speaks at Jasper and Lapis, but is staring at the dragon. 

Peridot’s response isn’t to answer her back, or to even continue struggling and trying to get out of this mess. Her response is to scream. The sound is unsettling, causes both Lapis and Jasper to cover their ears because of the source of the sound. Maybe it was her way of a growl or screech or just another part of her power but it had causes Malachite to drop her to cover her own ears.

Peridot stops screaming when she’s put down, landing on her hands and knees. She gives herself just a moment to breathe before she tries to escape, and that’s the moment Malachite swipes down at her. Peridot flinches, feeling the thickness of those claws press against her skin and cut into her. It scares her to the point where she doesn’t know what to do except open her mouth to scream again, but this time a dark green gas appears from it.

“We need to go. Right now.” Lapis says, pulling at Jasper again and the woman willingly goes with her.

The two move up to higher ground onto the boardwalk, as they watch the scene below them. Jasper is worried for the sake of Peridot, watching the gas begin to fill up the entire beach, eventually dissipating with the fear of the oncoming rain. Neither of them know what exactly the gas is, or how Peridot produced it, but when the gas is finally gone, Jasper can see both Peridot and Malachite still on the beach. Peridot is sitting back onto her heels and staring at Malachite’s body that had toppled over onto the sand. Jasper comes closer and Peridot stands up, running over to Jasper and clinging to her. 

“What happened?” Jasper asks, wrapping an arm tightly around Peridot. She notices the scratches on her arm, she had been bleeding and didn’t seem to feel pain from the injury. 

Peridot opens her mouth to speak, but ends up coughing instead. Trying to clear her throat but it hurt too much for her. She remembers the last time she felt this way, when Yellow had taken her from the woods and she attacked them out of fear. She wanted to survive, and she was afraid she would not make it unless she fought back. 

“Is this what happened the last time?” She asks and Peridot nods. “Is she dead?” The dragon only shrugs in response. She's only ever done this once before and had never been made aware of the impact the gas had on people. “Go with Lapis. I’ll take care of this.” Peridot shakes her head, she wants to stay with Jasper because she is so afraid of leaving her this time. She clings to her tighter this time. “Okay, okay. Just wait here, I need to call Garnet.”


	8. Chapter 8

“Open your mouth.” The doctor speaks and Peridot blinks at her, looking over to Jasper from the bed she’s sitting in.

“Can you just listen to her?” Jasper sighs, leaning against the cabinet behind her.

Pearl growls in response, and ultimately decides to listen to her. Looking back at the doctor in front of her who has the prettiest blue eyes she thinks she has ever seen.

Peridot’s not sure how she got dragged into this situation. At first, she thought things would go smoothly after Jasper called Garnet. She’s not sure what they were planning on doing with Malachite, or what happened to Lapis because she was gone by the time Garnet arrived. All she knows is that she hates hospitals because of how cold they are. She tried to escape the moment they entered what felt like the dead of winter to her, but Jasper grabs her before she can run off. She gets pulled along into this little room, stripped of her clothing and forced to shift into her dragon form—for proper testing—and is wearing this flimsy little gown that barely covers her buttocks and leaves her tail cold.

The woman herself wasn’t the worst. She was Garnet’s mother to start with which made her slightly better than any other stranger, and she was a doctor. That’s all Peridot knew about her besides her name was Sapphire. Well, Peridot also knew that she really wanted to take all of the things in the office and had already nabbed a bunch of stuff that Jasper had confiscated and given back to the front desk or the nurses station.

“Everything looks fine from the outside, but if you want we can do an x-ray and see exactly what happened. Dragons have these little nodule-like bumps in their throat and on their vocal chords that can amplify sound.”

Peridot frowns, crossing her arms across her chest. She just wanted to go back to her mountain of blankets in the living room, or take a bath and then go to sleep for at least a week. She had been exhausted from the excessive use of her powers.

“We can leave as soon as the tests are done. Can you just wait?” Jasper scolds her. She often feels like the one in charge of Peridot because she constantly throwing fits about what she can and cannot do. It's how many could tell she was not raised in normal living conditions. Normal meaning with a family that taught her wrong from right. It could be because she was young but Jasper still very little about dragons to even understand how exactly old Peridot had been. She thinks a lot about finding someone to help. 

“You said this happened before?” The doctor turns around, and when she isn’t looking Peridot swipes something from the small tray which Jasper glares at her until she puts it back.

“Yes. It was about eight months ago she told me. Destroyed her voice for a few days which were some of the best days of my life. Will you put that back?” She shouts at her, watching her put something into her pocket. Peridot sticks her tongue out in response.

“Dragons are complicated creatures. Most grow up in complete isolation if their parents are not around, so being in public like this can be challenging.” She smiles.

“That’s the weird thing. She was registered last year and I certainly didn’t register her. Her known father has been overseas since he got divorced ten years ago. The only person that could have registered her would be herself and she doesn’t remember any of that. She doesn’t remember half of her life and I don’t know why.”

“Well, there are a lot of reasons. It could be something that was done to her or it could be something she willfully chose to forget. A certain event or series of them.” She grabs the chart on the counter and begins writing. “I can be honest that I don’t know as much about dragons as I would like to. While I have encountered some in the past, it was never from a medical view. If you have any other issues or questions that you think I may be able to help with, don’t hesitate in calling me.” She stands up from the seat, setting down the clipboard and instructing Peridot to lie back. 

Peridot whines as she lays back, staring at the woman as she walks around the bed. She places her hands against her abdomen, pressing down just a bit and it makes Peridot hiss at her. “You know, it would be a perfect time for you two to conceive.”

“I’m not sure if you’re suggesting that as a friend, a seer, or someone who is about to give me a history lesson.”

Sapphire smiles, “dragons, serpents, most scaled creatures mate in the summer because it’s much warmer for them to bury their eggs. That’s all I meant by that.”

“Oh?” Jasper chuckles.

“Your dragon is rather fascinating.” Sapphire speaks as she moves from Peridot again, grabbing her clipboard. “I’m going to have a nurse draw some blood, and we have time to do that x-ray.”

“I guess if it doesn’t take that long. Peridot’s not known for her patience.”

“Good.” She’s about to leave and stops herself. “Jasper, can I talk to you about something in my office?”

“I don’t really trust Peridot to be left alone.”

“It’s nothing the nurse can’t handle.”

Jasper turns to her and shrugs, “yeah, okay then.”

Jasper follows Sapphire out of the room, not exactly sure what the woman wanted to speak to her about. She thinks it might be something about Peridot, or about her own refusal to see a doctor after being dragged into the ocean. Whatever it was, Jasper already knew she wasn’t willing to talk about her if the latter was the issue.

“You can have a seat.” Sapphire speaks as she walks into her office.

“I’m fine.” Jasper speaks, running a hand through her damp hair and letting some of the wet sand fall onto the wood floors. It’s knotted, makes her feel as if she needs six showers to wash out all the sand and she’s sure she smells like the ocean. She wrinkles her nose, “what exactly did you want?”

“I have a friend who would be willing to work with you.”

She raises her eyebrow, “oh yeah? On what?”

Sapphire moves behind her desk, taking a seat in her chair and placing her hands together. “You’ve been through so much in your life and I don’t exactly understand how you manage to handle it all. Pearl says you’ve been drinking—”

“What I do to handle stress doesn’t concern you.”

“It concerns me as your doctor and as your friend. I’ve known you for a very long time and you do not handle stress well. I would really recommend you speaking to someone, especially because of your current occupation and situation with that dragon.”

“I’ve been thinking about quitting actually.”

“And what brought that on?”

“This isn’t a therapy session, Sapph. I’m fine.”

“If I make an appointment for you will you think about going?”

Jasper looks around the office, staring at the shelf full of awards and certifications, the massive number of books, and even some family photos of her wife and Garnet. Maybe she was a little jealous that Sapphire somehow managed to balance a family and career without jumping off the deep end in the process.

“I’m sure you know the answer to that.”

Sapphire drops her hands flat on to the table. “I’ll let you know when she’s available, just in case.”

“Can I go now?”

“Ah, of course. Give this to Peridot for me.” She rolls her seat back to open a drawer in her desk, pulling out a candy bar.

“I’m guessing this is a future vision sort of thing.” She says, coming closer to take it from her.

“I’ll visit by with the results of her tests later tonight or maybe tomorrow when I have time. Like I said, I’m incredibly interested in her from a medical standpoint. I don’t think I’ve ever met one quite like her before. Even her coloring is quite different than normal dragons.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I’m sure you’ll see what I mean.”

“Right.” She rolls her eyes, turning around and heading out of the office.

The worst thing Jasper ever has go through are the people in her life that try to changer her, fix her, or blame her for things that were out of her control. Sometimes it was the people she met through her work, but it was mostly because who she once perceived to be her friend. Sapphire was in the middle of the list of people who did it to her, Pearl was near the bottom, and Garnet was at the top—most of the time—and while she cared about these people, she wanted them to stop. Sapphire was often use her powers and say things that would or could have an impact on Jasper’s decisions in her life and caused her to become quite indecisive, and Garnet just outright blamed her for past mistakes that jeopardized their relationship. Pearl was Pearl. Even if Jasper wrote a book she wouldn’t be able to explain her.

The only reason why Jasper even thinks about Pearl now is because she sees her near the hospital room. Garnet wasn’t the one who called her, and she knows Sapphire didn’t, so the only person who went ahead to let Pearl know what had happened was Lapis. She’s not sure what happened to Lapis after the events, the woman had run off somewhere—maybe back to the ocean—but Jasper was still worried about her. Sapphire described what Peridot did as some sort of toxic nerve gas. While it didn’t affect Jasper or Peridot directly, it could have side-effects that caused the staff to keep them overnight. Malachite was there, too.

Jasper’s not sure what happened to Malachite due to Peridot’s powers and as much as she pretends she does not care, she does. She cares about Malachite because she and her are the same. It’s not just the mess of powers that helped create Malachite, but it was Jasper’s anger during this time. It’s why Jasper has not gone to see Malachite. The doctors kept her down in the basement, in a room that neutralizes all powers and even without the use of those powers she was still so strong. She’s broken out before but Garnet has always been suspicious about those events. It was a long time ago, patterns in the weather had caused hurricanes and storms that did more damage to their town than anywhere else. It was a mixture of Malachite—who was disrupting the normal patterns of the oceans—and the ones who control the seas.

It’s the reason the weather had become so violent just in a few hours. Ever since Jasper had been taken to the hospital there had been heavy rain, low rumbles of thunder around them and streaks of lighting brightening up the dim hallways and rooms. She sees it the moment looks out the window past the nurses’ station. There was a commotion happening there, a patient had bit one of the nurses and she needed stitches. Jasper chuckles because she knows it was Peridot. Outside of the events, being at the hospital was not so bad and she did have a slight break from everything in her life that was giving her a migraine.

Jasper enters her room and takes a seat on the bed, staring at Pearl who is in the room and arranging flowers on top of the small drawer. “Where’s Peridot at?” She asks and Jasper shrugs even though Pearl isn’t looking at her. “I heard she bit a nurse. She should really learn how to control herself better in public.” She stops touching the flowers for a moment, “are you going to tell me what happened?”

“No.” She shifts on the bed, laying down and making a face at how uncomfortable the pillow is.

“You know I tell you everything and you could show some decency and talk to me about this.”

“I don’t ask you to tell me everything. When we met and I helped you I did it because I was going to gain something from it. I didn’t help you because I expected us to be best friends forever and we were going to tell each other everything.”

“I owed you for saving my life and that is why I am still here.”

“You don’t need to be.”

“Why do you have to push everyone away?”

Jasper shrugs.

“I’m going to talk to Sapphire about when you will be released and then I’ll bring back some food. Where is Peridot?” She asks that question again and Jasper sighs.

“I don’t know. She was in quarantine when we got here and then they did some blood work and x-rays and I don’t know where they put her at now.”

“I’ll ask. I’ll be back later.”

Pearl grabs her purse sitting on the dresser and leaves the room. Jasper groans.

Jasper thinks too often about the situation that had tossed Pearl into her life permanently. It happened more than one hundred years ago but she remembers it because she once had fallen in love with Pearl. However, it was a different time for her. She didn’t fall in love with Pearl because she loved Pearl, she loved the idea and power behind who Pearl once was.

_Jasper remembers that her presence has been requested at the castle three times in her life. The first time was over twenty years ago, when the princess was crowned and she was required to place a small blessing over the child. The second time, was that same princesses’ coronation to becoming the new queen when the former had died. The third time was tonight, when guards had come to her home and demanded her meet with the queen. The guards had never been so adamant about a meeting that she was practically dragged from her home, but the queen and her seldom met and when they did it was outside of the castle and only at inopportune times. It’s why she questions what is so urgent the queen needs her and her magic for._

_The place she lives in now is much different from the Unseelie Court she came from. She was born in woods, was part of a race of creatures involving in great magic and it was nothing that the humans in this place could recreate. She held markings of her kind which decorated her skin in patches much brighter than her dark skin and eyes as gold as ancient treasures. The way she dressed was much more provocative than the average person but then again, she was not average. Her size and appearance was based on the fact she was only part human, it was the part of her that wanted to live a life amongst them._

_It was the prior queen whom had given her the motivation to live apart from her true home. A beautiful woman who would dress herself in sheer pink cloth, and silks, who would call for the succubus to her chambers and lie with her at night. When she had died, Jasper decided to stay in the town to look over the woman who later became the current queen. Her name was Pearl and she was found as a child trapped in the brambles of a garden right out of town. The interest in her was the similar markings over her skin that were marked in sky blue. The markings over her forehead, shoulder and back were covered by clothing or the waist-length of her pale hair. Those markings were the connection the two had had. Jasper was certain that the queen belonged to the Seelie Court, but how she had gotten so far from home she was never quite sure of._

_When the guards requested her to meet with the queen, they wait for her to prepare her things and guide her towards the castle gates. She lives just outside of the town and because of the threat of different creatures in the woods, there’s always three people to escort. The first one she knows from arm wrestling and drinking matches at the bar, and the other two are simple men who guard the gates at night. The woman’s name is Garnet and she is less of a guard and more of a right hand to the queen, an incredibly strong woman who was specifically hired to help protect Pearl from harm when she was ready to begin her reign. She’s the one who is honest with Jasper, who tells her what is going on within the castle or when panic arises from any imminent threats._

_She is the one who leads Jasper up the grand staircase, through the castle halls and directs her to the queen’s chamber. It’s not the first time she has been lead around the castle, before Garnet there was a woman named Rose who would share the history of the castle with her. She called this woman her sister, and she would tell stories of battles the queen had fought in over hundreds of years and would show photographs and paintings that were tucked away in a private storage room. Jasper always remembers these things because life without the prior queen had become challenging for her. That was more than ten years ago and Jasper has tried to move on but she can’t keep herself away from the kingdom in fear for the worse._

_The new queen was just as skilled as the queen before her, if not more so. She was well versed in history, arts and languages. She knew the economy, the structure of the land, trade throughout other kingdoms, and it was enough to have peace with the outlying kingdoms since her reign took place. She was extremely intelligent, calculating, and had she not taken place as the queen she could have easily become a scholar or take place in battle at the forefront of the armies._

_It wasn’t just her knowledge that was impressive, it was her appearance that was unlike most Jasper had even seen before. The woman before her was gorgeous, but all women of her kind had been. Jasper was convinced that this queen had certainly been using glamour to make herself appear much different than she truly would look. She feels this way because when she enters the bedroom—and Garnet closes the door behind her—she can see the queen near the window. Her skin illuminated by the moonlight shining through the arched window, dressed in such sheer fabric that makes her more intimate parts most visible. She remembers when the prior queen would greet her like this and take her to bed every night, but this time was different. Jasper was not here for those reasons but she would not mind if it were to happen tonight._  
_She waits for the queen to speak to her because Jasper does not know what her intentions are. As much as she feels like she understands this woman, and trying to use her powers to have a peek of whatever turmoil is going on inside of her, she can’t. It’s not that Jasper’s unable to it’s that she promised herself to stop meddling in people’s lives a long time ago. She always finds herself in a mess that she cannot work her way out of unless she uses her fists, and this was not one of those times she was willing to fight._

_“It’s good to see you.” The queen speaks and Jasper keeps the flat look over her face. She doesn’t want to show any interest in the queen, but steps forward because the queen does not. “Have you been well?”_

_“I’ve survived worse times.”_

_“Haven’t we all?” She turns away from the window, pushing long locks behind her back. “I know it’s late and I would not call you here if this wasn’t important…” She pauses, crossing her arms across her sheer robes. “There’s someone in the castle that I need you to take care of.”_

_“You have guards.”_

_“That’s not the point. I don’t know who this person is but it seems as if they have a vendetta against me personally. I can understand that many may not like me but I am the queen. I cannot have this sort of villainous behavior in my castle or my village. I’m sure you can understand.”_

_“What am I supposed to do?” She raises an eyebrow, hands on her hips as if she’s a stubborn_  
_child._

_“We both know you’re not a sorceress and while we are from two different courts. You know that’s not exactly celebrated.”_

_“So, you’re aware of what I am.”_

_“Since I first met you, yes.” She purses her lips. “I know that I’m human but the abilities we share are from the court that took me in as a child. There are only temporary abilities and it does not allow me to do what…You can.” She looks over Jasper from where she stands, the definition of her arms and the shape of her body were so different than most women she had seen before._  
_“As you know it is your duty to help me-”_

_Jasper laughs, cutting the queen off, “my duty?”_

_“Of course. You are but a member of my village. I can make you much more than that.”_

_“Are you trying to seduce me?”_

_“Seducing the succubus, what irony.” She reaches her hands out to adjust the jacket that Jasper is wearing. “Back to what we were discussing. I need you to find this person for me and kill them.” She drops her hands again, walking to her bed and taking a seat._

_“What’s in it for me?”_

_“What do you desire?” She isn’t even looking at Jasper anymore, seemingly distracted by the placement of her robes._

_“You are just going to have to owe me I guess.”_

_“I think I can arrange that. Why don’t you stay with me tonight? It would be such a hassle for you to travel back to your home alone.”_

_“Of course, my queen.”_

It was their first official meeting that did Jasper in. She did anything Pearl had asked of her, spent many nights in the castle and was there when that traitor had attacked. After Pearl had died and Jasper brought her back to life, Jasper slowly lost her respect for her as a queen. She’s not sure why, maybe it’s because of how close they’ve been working together for all these years. Pearl’s always been there, always shown such an interest in her personal life, but she couldn’t help but push her away. Jasper never allowed people to become close with her and the fact she allowed Peridot to do so, must have scared Pearl as much as it scared her.

They have always had a connection though, ever since Jasper used the energies around her, and even her own to save the woman. She’s not sure what made her do so but she’s not sure where she would be without Pearl. Jasper sighs as she sits up in bed, turning her head slightly to look out at the window when she hears the sudden sound of the thunder. It’s louder than it had been prior, almost as if the storm was directly over the hospital. She gets up, wanting to look outside but Pearl comes into the room again and Peridot is with her. Peridot climbs onto Jasper’s bed immediately and takes her blankets, covering herself in the thin sheets and Jasper just shakes her head at the action.

“I just got an alert for a tornado watch.” Pearl speaks, handing Jasper a plastic bag that she takes from her. Jasper pokes and prods at Peridot over the blanket until she moves over so Jasper can sit down.

“I wouldn’t be surprise if this was Malachite. She doesn’t do well to being locked up.”

“No. Sapphire said it wasn’t possible because of the abilities of the room she’s inside of. If anything is happening to the seas and causing this strange weather it would have to be something else, and it may as well just be natural. With all of the magic on this side of the world I wouldn’t be surprised if there was more we didn’t know about it.”

Jasper shrugs. “Did she say when we can leave? I’m sure Peridot’s slowly freezing to death. Oh.” She stops, rummaging into her pocket and pulling out that candy Sapphire had given to her.  
“Sapphire told me to give this to Peridot and I still don’t know why.”

Pearl shakes her head, “no one quite understands her.” She says, watching Peridot snatch the candy bar from Jasper and ripping the wrapper open with her teeth. “But she’s still waiting on the lab work and if everything comes back fine I think you two can leave. You should visit Malachite before you leave. I know you need to talk to her after everything that has happened. I wish Lapis would have stayed to do so, too.”

“…I guess I’ll go do that first.” Jasper speaks as she sets the plastic bag down onto the bed and stands up. “You can keep an eye on Peridot for me.”

“Sure. We’ll wait here.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I promised like...a sex scene or something but I gave up on it. Maybe next time.

Jasper doesn’t want to do this. She doesn’t want to see Malachite and she doesn’t want to be in this hospital. Nothing would make her feel better than to go back home and lay in bed for the next six months while she ruminates over everything that has happened to her. She doesn’t care about her career anymore or anything she does that has a further impact on that part of her life because she’s done with it. When she heads home she’s giving up her business and is going to take a much-needed break from it all. Unfortunately for her, she cannot have a break from it because she can sense Peridot, and then hear her running down the hallway. 

When Peridot jumps onto her back she’s nearly knocked down, but Jasper manages to keep her balance. It’s hard because Peridot’s claws are digging into her skin and Jasper groans because she won’t get off her. She tries to shake the dragon off, but Peridot has somehow adapted to climbing onto people’s backs and Jasper has to deal with it at this point. “Get off me before I hurt you.” She can hear Peridot quietly mocking her and then another set of footsteps, much lighter than the heavier running from Peridot. 

“I would be sorry, but how do you expect me to contain her when she's a dragon?” Pearl’s voice comes, quite out of breath as she walks over to help Peridot down onto the floor again. 

Jasper rubs her temples because she can feel the headache coming in. “Please stop.”

“Are you sure you want to do this on your own? If you go into that room you will not be able to use any of your powers.” 

“I just need to talk to her.” 

Pearl nods, gripping Peridot’s arm tightly when she tries to run off again. “I’ll wait out here with her.”

Jasper thinks for a moment to get herself in the right mindset again. She’s not sure why Malachite has such a big impact over her, but for years all she could do was think how different her life might have become if she had somehow been able to help her. She shakes her head, trying to stop thinking about it as she walks walks into the next room and unlocking a door with the code she had been given. The moment the door opens she can sense a lack of energy coming from it. The room negates all effects from her powers but also from Malachite; this is the first time she can feel comforted by the concept that Malachite cannot hurt her like before.

She shuts the door behind her, looking around at the white walls until she sees Malachite balled up in a corner of the room. Her hair is damp, stuck to her dark skin and her arms are bound around her chest in a strait jacket. She’s dressed in white, forced into thin clothing by some of the nurses in the hospital which are surprisingly still neat even though Malachite must have struggled. 

“What do you want?” She growls the moment Jasper comes closer to her, looking up and watching the succubus. 

“I just wanted to talk to you and see how you were…”

“No. You wanted to feel better about your pathetic life by seeing how pathetic I am now. You wanted to gloat about this position you put me in.”

“Mal-

“Don’t say my name!” She shouts at her, looking back down and leaning against the wall. “You don’t have the right.”

Jasper breathes, focusing on what she came here for. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“You could put me out my fucking misery.” She struggles in the binds for a moment before settling back against the wall again. “This is your fault. If you hadn’t just left me alone I wouldn’t be here.” 

“If I had left you alone you would have continued to create chaos with every step. I did you a favor.”

“See, didn’t I say you were here to gloat.” She smirks.

“I wanted to help you. I wanted to save you and teach you how control your powers so something like this would have never happened. You are the one who decided to leave.” 

Malachite mocks her as she speaks, mimicking her words before laughing. “No, you just wanted to help yourself. You wanted to feel better about what you did to me.”

The more Jasper speaks to her, the more that negative energy flowers near her. It does not take her long to finally come to the realization it wasn’t her fault for what happened to Malachite. The creation, yes, but the aftermath of Malachite’s behavior was of her own volition. “I just thought that if we spoke I could help you. I guess I was wrong.” She turns around to leave the room and Malachite stops her. 

“No, don’t leave.” She hisses, “don’t leave me in here by myself.”

“Why? Every time I try to help you, you just screw me over with some sad story.” Jasper can’t tell if this is real emotion she’s facing or if Malachite is trying to trick her. Didn’t Pearl once say that certain dragon’s and reptile creatures were tricksters? While Malachite wasn’t green and wasn’t a dragon, she still had the blood of one and Jasper was not quick to trust her like she had done Peridot. She could read Peridot, but Malachite was always a mystery. 

“I’ll play nice.”

“No, you won’t. The doctors are going to give you some trial medication that temporarily binds powers. When that happens, I’m going to come back and push all my energy into you until you explain to me what happened. What caused you to become like this?”

Malachite starts laughing, “why do you think this is all about you? Why can’t I just be this way because I like it?”

“Because you are the physical embodiment of power and energy that shouldn’t have been allowed to exist. Lapis wanted to destroy you and I wanted to save you. I want to know if I made the right choice.” 

Jasper leaves the room as she hears Malachite calling to her to come back. She can hear the woman banging her head against the wall, but the sound dies down when she shuts the door behind her. She breathes, knowing it was such a short conversation but she feels as if she cannot breathe any longer. It was such a dangerous situation to place them in the room by themselves, but she needs Malachite to know she wants to save her and protect her even if it means the worse possible situation. Even if she knows that Malachite hates her and is nothing more than that hatred and anger. Malachite is still a part of her. 

The moment Jasper steps into the hallway, Peridot jumps on her again and nearly knocks Jasper down. “I swear if you don’t quit it.” Peridot wraps her arms around Jasper’s neck as she watches Pearl come closer. 

“I thought you would have stayed in there much longer.”

“I thought about it, but I just changed my mind part way through. She obviously wants help but is so used to the world she created for herself. I need time to figure out a way I can help her before I really talk to her.”

“You’re right, but you need some time to focus on yourself before you go back in there.”

Jasper nods as she walks back down the hallway, unwillingly carrying Peridot who refuses to take her claws out of her skin. She’s stopped by one of the nurses who wants to go over some test results with her but after that they’re both allowed to leave, and Jasper can’t wait to finally head back home. 

When she arrives home she immediately heads to her bedroom, takes a shower, gets dressed and then goes to bed. She feels absolutely disgusting from being dragged down into the ocean and Peridot follows suit not long after she falls asleep. The issue is she can’t really sleep. As exhausted as she is, she only achieves ten to twenty minutes of rest every hour before she decides to give up and get something to eat. One of the first things she often does when she wakes up in the morning is look for Peridot because she’s often sleeping in a strange place or watching television, but it was midnight and Peridot was not inside. She checks outside before giving up because Peridot did like laying in the grass when the weather was warmer. She grabs a quick snack from the fridge, finishing it as she walks out back. 

When Jasper walks outside she shivers because her hair is still wet, and the weather is beginning to cool down for the night. She doesn’t normally spend much time outside because she’s often busy, but Peridot is always outside digging in the backyard or complaining about the pool having too much chlorine, so she can’t swim. Jasper normally ignores her complains and scolds her for ruining the yard, but Peridot sticks her tongue out and curls up in one of the holes she has dug. Peridot is not in a hole now, but rather lying on the ground. 

“What are you doing out here?” Jasper asks, and Peridot sits up to look at her. 

“I heard a dog.” Her voice cracks when she speaks, raspy and soft from the effects of her powers still. It seems to be that her voice begins to come back at least within a day. 

“Are those my blankets?” Jasper comes over to Peridot, looking at the mess of blankets she has laid out on the grass, so she can lay in the dark comfortably. It’s much warmer outside than it is inside, and Peridot has shed the clothing she often wears to warm her scales properly. She sits down next to her, kicking off her shoes and sighing. “It looks like it’s going to rain.” 

“Maybe.” She rolls over, nuzzling into Jasper’s chest. “I like the rain.”

“I thought you hated being wet and cold.”

She grumbles and attempts to explain, “sometimes my scales get dry and the rain helps.” 

“Why don’t I know this about you?” Jasper has realized over the past few weeks there is so much she does not know about Peridot. Half of it was because people knew very little about dragons to begin with, but the other half was because Peridot never told her most of these things when asked. She far too often kept things a secret from Jasper; her emotions, opinions, any real facts about herself and it was exhausting after a while. She really liked having Peridot around and being in this relationship with her, that those things were becoming more important to her. 

“You probably don’t know my favorite color either.” 

“If it’s not green there’s some sort of problem with you.” 

Peridot snickers in response before coughing. 

“Do you want to go somewhere?” 

“Go where?” She sits up, looking down at Jasper. 

“On a trip? Wherever you want to go, I’ll drive.”

“Do you hate it here?”

She shrugs, “I feel like I’ve lost my purpose for being here. When I first came here I was so focused on trying to help people because Rose helped me but now…” She sighs.

“Oh! I know her! Steven’s mom!” Her voice crackers when she shouts, and then she wiggles in place.

“Yes. Why are you so excited suddenly?” 

“Because I remembered something.” 

“Good job.” She smiles up at Peridot.

“Where do you want to go?”

“Maybe back home?”

“Of course, I would have to come. You can’t leave me all alone with the babies.” She nods, and Jasper sits up, knocking Peridot off her. 

“Did you just say babies?” Jasper asks her in a sudden panic.

Peridot growls as she sits back up on the blanket. “That really hurt!” 

“Focus. Did you just say babies?” 

“Yes! But you didn’t have to knock me down.”

“Are you pregnant?”

“Of course I’m not. I’m speaking hypothetically. I mean, it’s not like you’re leaving tomorrow.” 

“Right.” She chuckles nervously. 

“I thought you wanted to have kids.”

“I do but—”

“But what?”

“I mean after everything I guess I just highly doubt if I would be good at anything anymore.”

“Would you want to with me?”

“It was my plan eventually, but that was before all this shit happened. With Malachite and Lapis, and I still barely know anything about you and the whole dragon thing.”

“Well, what do you want to know about me?” She comes closer, sitting in Jasper’s lap and Jasper wraps her arms around her. 

Jasper looks at her, trying to think of anything she just doesn’t know yet—which is a lot of things—but the only thing she can focus on is the concept of a dragon becoming pregnant. “Would you have an actual child?” She had read somewhere about many reptiles laying eggs, and once about dragon eggs taking thousands of years to hatch but she still knew nothing about the possibilities of it happening with Peridot.

She blinks in response. 

“Like, would it be a live birth or eggs?”

“Oh.” She shrugs, “I have no idea. I guess it depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“I have no idea.” She shakes her head.

Jasper squeezes her eyes shut and groans, “you are so annoying.”

Peridot mocks the tone of her voice. 

“Grab some blankets and help me bring them inside.” She playfully pushes Peridot off her and stands up. 

She pulls most of the blankets up and carries them into the house, shaking them out and putting them into the washer so she doesn’t bring ants into the house. Peridot does absolutely nothing to help her and when she walks into the kitchen from the backroom, Peridot is climbing onto the island in the kitchen. In the past six months, Peridot has developed a free range of the house and it was without Jasper’s permission. Random things in the basement and her office had gone missing, she had rearranged her bedroom and had built shelves with Pearl to hold all the items she collected. It was organized chaos, but it was too chaotic for Jasper to deal with sometimes. 

“Are you going back to sleep?” Peridot speaks as she watches Jasper open the refrigerator for a bottle of water. 

“I couldn’t sleep for long. I’m too worried about everything else happening.”

“Huh. Want me to lie down with you?” 

Jasper looks at Peridot as she takes off the cap and takes a sip. “Sure. I’ll stay down here with you.”

Jasper walks out of the kitchen and Peridot follows her, running into her handmade fort for a quick minute. Jasper takes a seat onto the couch, watching Peridot take the pillows sitting near the window and put them into her fort. The house was a mess without Pearl around for the past couple of days. Jasper managed to keep the kitchen clean, but Peridot had destroyed the living room by trying to make a fort from the couch cushions and pillows she had stolen throughout the house. Most of the beds were also missing sheets but Jasper threated to tie her up if she had dared to touch her own bedsheets. She tried to clean up, but Peridot would hiss at her or bite her arm and it is why Jasper’s lower leg was covered in scratches and bite marks. Peridot was extremely territory and refused to allow Jasper to go near anything in the living room after she rearranged it. The only thing Jasper forced her to put back were the couch cushions.

At first, Jasper thought it might be related to nesting. She’s read somewhere that lizards like warmth and sometimes will bury themselves in sand or dirt. It would explain the holes in the backyard and the giant mess in her living room. But Peridot wasn’t really a lizard, while she was a dragon who lacked the knowledge of personal space, she did have a lot of lizard-esque traits minus the sticky tongue. One issue was that Peridot didn’t really know anything about herself as a dragon. The second issue was if Peridot ever heard Jasper compare her to a lizard, Peridot would bite her or growls at her. She really wishes she could do something about the biting. 

“So, is Pearl coming by tomorrow?” Peridot asks as she peeks her head out of her fort and Jasper shrugs as she lays down on the couch.

“Why do you care?”

“Because she moved one of my pillows and I can’t find it.” She huffs. 

“Wow, such a sad story.” Jasper chuckles, lifting her arms up to stretch. 

“I know!” Peridot comes out of her fort, climbing onto the couch and kneeing Jasper in the side as she manages to get comfortable while sitting on top of her. “Are you going back to sleep?”

“Depends. Will you let me?”

Peridot thinks about it for a moment before giggling. “…Maybe.”

“This is why I don’t give you caffeine.”

“Aw, but I like when you give things to me.”

She shrugs, “oh well. Sapphire was the one who gave me that candy for you, so you would have to thank her.”

“Why’d she do that?”

“Sapphire has a few abilities, and one is seeing different paths of the future. She often tries to influence a specific path if she knows that it is the most common path to happen. For example, if she knew it was going to rain and the weather predicted it wrong, she’d give me an umbrella to make sure I didn’t get wet. I just have no idea what giving candy does for you.”

“Well, I’m already objectively the best so I have no idea what it does for me either.” 

“No?” 

“Nope. See, it’s simple. There’s scientific proof that dragons are the superior race to all other races of monsters. For one, we live for thousands of years which is even longer than a phoenix.”

“So, I have to put up with you for thousands of years?” Jasper laughs and Peridot grumbles at her in response. 

“Don’t be mean to me because I’m the best. Dragons are also incredibly rare and highly sought after. So, consider yourself lucky you have someone like me in your life.

“Come lay down.” She grabs Peridot’s arm to pull her down against her chest. She waits a second, wanting to get comfortable on the couch even with Peridot jabbing her in the side. “Now close your eyes and shut up.”

“What if I don’t want to sleep?” She whines, immediately wiggling out of Jasper’s grasp and sitting back up.

“Okay, what do you want to do?” Jasper tries to read Peridot because she’s gotten so good at it over the past year. Her emotional aura was so easily visible and the colors that swirled around her were always the same. This time it was this clear red with hints of orange swirled about and Jasper looks back up at her. “Do you want to have sex?” 

“What?” She asks, suddenly startled by the accusation. “Why would I-”

“Your aura.”

“Oh right, I forgot you can do that.” 

“I can do a lot of things. We just don’t talk about them because you whine.”

“I don’t whine! It’s just rude to tell me how I’m feeling when I don’t always know how I’m feeling.”

Jasper pauses, “you do realize that’s the exact reason why it is necessary.” 

Peridot groans loudly, “we were just talking about stuff-”

“Yes, we were.” She places a hand on Peridot’s arm and watches the colors around her brighten up even more. “Is that what you want?”

Peridot feels her body become overheated from embarrassment and from Jasper touching her, bringing those sexual urges to the surface. “…yes.” She corrects herself, "no? Maybe?" She doesn't know because Jasper's powers influence her too much to think for herself sometimes.

“You’re lucky that your body is naturally covered in scales and you can go out in public like this.” She was mainly referring to the lack of clothes Peridot wore. 

“Like what?” She swallows, Jasper’s hand dragging down her arm and across her chest. 

“Like you’re seconds away from feeling my fingers inside of you.” Jasper always notes how different Peridot’s body is to anyone else’s because of the scales. They shape her entire body to the form of breasts and a vulva, but they’re covered in scales and thicker skin. She doesn’t have visible nipples, but a small indent of where they should exist; her breasts are still soft but not as sensitive as they could be. Jasper still runs her hand over them because she likes how different the two are from one another. 

“Do you want me to just touch you?” Jasper asks her, but Peridot doesn’t want to answer her. She’s too busy with the energy Jasper’s purposely pushing into her, causing the sudden wetness in between her legs and the moans coming from her mouth. Jasper always does this, pushes too much power into Peridot which cannot properly satisfy her. “I need you to let me know.”

“I don’t-” She starts to speak as her fingers dig into Jasper’s shirt and she arches back at the feeling. “Please stop.”

Jasper drops her hand from Peridot’s skin, quickly believing she made some sort of mistake. “Are you okay?” She asks, lowering her eyes and watching Peridot shake her head ‘yes’. “What’s wrong?” 

“It’s just that you don’t have to use your powers to make me any more willing than I already am.”

“I’m sorry. It’s always been how I can get the most energy if I need it, but I have a bad habit of doing it when I don’t need it.” She lifts her hand back to Peridot’s face, her thumb pressing against her bottom lip as her palm presses against her cheek. “But, I would be lying if I said I didn’t like watching you fall apart from my touch.”

Peridot leans down to kiss her, fingers still twisted in the fabric of Jasper’s shirt. But her hands drop suddenly and she groans uncomfortably, not because of any sexual pleasure but because of whatever is plaguing her mind. 

“Why are you suddenly nervous? I need you to tell me what’s bothering you because I can’t read your mind.” Jasper sighs when Peridot pulls away from her; noticing the bright reds of her aura taking over the rest. All that sexual energy had sudden dissipated into something else so suddenly because Peridot must have had something else on her mind. 

“Uh…” She pauses, sitting back and pulling away from Jasper’s touch. Peridot was never an honest person; she felt her loyalties to her own kind and living with Jasper and being with Jasper was so different for her. Even if she didn’t remember people in her past, she would never forget what Jasper has done for her and the relationship they’ve built together over almost two years. “I think that…I might be…” She clears her throat, “in love with you.” She squeaks at the end of speaking and Jasper chuckles as she pulls Peridot to lay down with her. 

“Good. I think I love you, too.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you might think I know what is happening in my own story. You would be wrong.

Sleeping is something that does not come easy for Jasper. Even after spending an entire day cleaning up her office and cleaning up after Peridot, she still finds herself unable to sleep. When she does eventually fall asleep; she rarely dreams. When her dreams do come it is in the form of memories which she replays from her past. Memories of time spent with her mother who was the succubus who taught her how to use her powers, or events from wars she fought to keep the peace of kingdoms in her past. She remembers events she wishes she could forget, events which rearrange in her mind, turning into a nightmare. She often wakes in a panic, but tonight was different. At first, she was not dreaming at all, a dreamless sleep followed by questioning if she had fallen asleep in the first place. But, the deeper into her slumber causes her to feel comforted, reminiscing of a time where she felt safe and loved in the arms of her mother. The feeling was quickly shattered by a scream which startled her awake.

She lies in bed with her eyes wide opened until she hears screaming again, lifting herself up from her bed and grabbing her robe from the back of her door. By the time she reaches the hallway she begins to hear whimpering and it is clear to her that it is Peridot who had been yelling, but when she takes her first step down the staircase she can sense the change in energy and emotions in the room below. Peridot was normally full of lust and negative emotions; the lust growing from being in close quarters with a succubus and the negativity coming from her childish behavior and simply not getting her way around the house. The negative emotions were not necessarily bad, and Jasper was used to the behavior and had learned to find it rather endearing over time, but this sudden drop in emotions was different. Jasper was met with an overwhelming amount of fear and sorrow which frightened her more than her nightmares ever could.

“Peridot?” Jasper calls out, expecting to hear a response from Peridot but can only can hear her sobbing in the living room. She turns the light on when she reaches the bottom of the stair and gasps at the searing pain in her foot after she steps on something sharp and hard. She lifts her leg, crossing it against her thigh as she holds onto the wall. There was a dragon scale lodged into her foot which she struggles to pull out. The wound heals within seconds and Jasper drops the scale back onto the floor. She puts her foot back down as she walks over to Peridot who has been huddled up in the corner of the room with a blanket.

Jasper’s go to question is to ask if she was okay, regardless of the physical symptoms clearly plaguing her. 

Peridot shakes her head and a few pieces of her scales fall from the blanket and litter the ground around her.

Jasper kneels in front of her, reaching out for the blanket and pulling it down from around her head. The base of her horns had cracked, splintering right up to the tip and she can visibly see a large chunk broken off one of them. There was also blood that had dried around the base of her scalp from the horns breaking from the base up.

“Let me…” She starts, trying to think of something she can do for her besides call Sapphire. No one was fluent in the needs of a dragon, but if anyone could help it was most likely her. Jasper reaches out and puts a hand on Peridot’s neck which makes the dragon wince, not in pain, but out of fear. Jasper’s only purpose in life—or so she believed—was to help people in pain. It was the reason she became a lawyer and the reason why she participated in the Obsidian Market against the wishes of the people around her. Being a succubus only aided to that ability for her, letting her power flow into Peridot to keep the pain at a more manageable level. Even with the slightest bit of energy forcing its way into Peridot makes her emotional energy more stable and causes Jasper to relax as well. 

“I know you don’t like when I do that, but I don’t know what else to do to help…” Jasper admits to Peridot who whimpers as the flow of energy stops and Jasper pulls her hand away. “Can you move?” Peridot hesitantly nods in respond, Jasper standing up before helping Peridot onto her own feet. 

The moment Peridot stands up she nearly falls onto her knees again, the bones in her legs beginning to crack which makes her begin to cry again. Jasper holds onto her, brings her over to the couch and lies her down, making sure she is comfortable before leaving the room for a few minutes. She heads back upstairs to grab her phone, sending Pearl a message and calling Sapphire to come over as soon as she can. She is not sure what either of those women can do for a creature like Peridot, but it was hopefully more than she could. 

She stays by Peridot during this, feeds her as much power as she possibly can until Peridot finally falls back asleep. 

Dreaming was an awful experience for Jasper even if she had the pleasure of entertaining a lovely woman before she fell asleep. When that happened, her dreams were filled with lust and she found herself lying in heavy blankets with her natural form exposed for everyone to see. That was something not even Peridot had seen, because as a succubus she had kept herself well fed and never found it necessary to be stuck in such a demonic form. But in these dreams, her amber eyes would glow with such vibrancy that mimicked the runes and markings which would appear over her face and arms. Markings that signified what she was and represented the power she was born with and which flowed throughout her. Then there were the horns, part of her true form which were thin, black, long and affixed to her head which followed the color of her tail which was also patterned with amber colored scales. Many found her to be mesmerizing in such a state, but it was a form Jasper had never been proud of. She wishes she could be more open with herself, with who and what she was like Peridot was able to do, but it seemed impossible for her. If Pearl was able to hide what she really was, then she could do the same. 

However, this was not a dream and she was awake with both eyelids lowered. She wants to sleep and speed up the day, but she can hear the clock from the living room ticking along to the seconds and it makes Jasper painfully aware that she has no control over time.

“Sapphire said she wants you to come to the hospital and look at some x-rays.” It was Pearl who was speaking to her, she had almost forgotten she had gone to Pearl’s home after Sapphire had security escort her out of the hospital. It was not in Jasper’s place to stay there and especially not with the lack of powers and control she was showing. It was because she had given so much to Peridot just to help her, then the markings and runes started appearing on her body again.

“…Okay.” Jasper sighs, opening her eyes completely and turning on the bed to look at Pearl. She was tugging the shirt down to her hips, trying to make herself look more presentable before putting her shoes on.

“How are you feeling?” Pearl asks as she sits on the edge of the bed, slipping on a pair of sneakers.

“I don’t know.” Jasper shrugs as she sits up in bed.

“It looks like they’re starting to go away.” Pearl turns around to look as Jasper. “You really haven’t told Peridot about that?”

“Of course I haven’t. I haven’t exactly come into terms with this part of myself.”

“It’s obviously triggered by strong emotions and power, not just because of your heavy use of it. I think if you just relax and save your energy it will go away on its own.”

“Does this happen to you?” Jasper asks, and Pearl gets up from the bed to grab Jasper’s clothes for her.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” she sighs, “get dressed so we can go.”

It hadn’t been a full twenty-four hours since Peridot had gone to the hospital and the last she knew her femurs had broken, and she had several hair line fractures and cracks throughout the rest of her legs and part of her spine. A normal person would be paralyzed from an event like that, but Sapphire said she was starting to heal. The first six-hour mark her bones were starting to mend themselves back together—or so Pearl had told her—and now they were at the sixteen-hour mark and Sapphire wanted to document everything she could about the situation. Not just by saving results of Peridot’s testing but also by getting into contact with Zarah, the woman listed as Peridot’s mother in her scan. That was what Jasper had to look forward to at the hospital, contact with a lawyer who was a complete and utter ditz and test results.

She just wanted Peridot to be okay.

When they arrive at the hospital, one of the security guards who had escorted Jasper out earlier that morning warns her to behave. The story behind that was quite simple; Jasper punched one of the security guards in a sudden fit of anger due to her weakening powers. It was why she ended up as Pearl’s apartment in the first place, she was normally the person she went to when she had no one else to satisfy her desires. Although, she was still running on empty in the end of it all. 

Jasper spends most her time waiting in Sapphire’s office because she wants Peridot to rest and get better, but also because Sapphire won’t let her see her yet. She had Pearl to keep her company, but she is too busy investigating the books on the shelves of the office and complaining about the organization of them. Jasper almost falls asleep before she hears a voice in the hallway. 

“This is absolutely ridiculous. I haven’t seen Peridot in years and I still can’t see her?” The voice grows louder when the office door opens and Sapphire walks in with the woman. This was Zarah Seong, one of Seong Tae Woo’s several ex-wives and Peridot’s mother. Jasper has only met the woman once before, but because of their related jobs often heard stories about the woman. To her knowledge, Zarah was a simple human with fae ancestry. That alone made it clear to Jasper that this woman was not Peridot’s biological mother. 

“I need her to rest.” Sapphire states clearly. “She should be out in a day or two and she has been living at Jasper’s house, so you can find her there.” She walks over to her desk, grabbing a file.

“Yeah, because my house is just an open door for strangers and people I don’t like to just walk on in.” Jasper rolls her eyes before stretching her arms up. “But hey, I have a question for Zarah.”

The woman turns and looks at Jasper, obviously panicked about the situation at hand. In general, Jasper made most people nervous because of her height and size. “Y-Yes?”

“Do you know who Peridot’s mom is? Like, the woman who actual gave birth to her I mean.”

“No. I mean, Tae Woo has been married before, but I know none of those women are dragons. Although, Peridot’s mother doesn’t necessarily have to be a dragon.” Zarah stands there as if she is thinking long and hard about what to say next.

“So, are you going to explain yourself?”

“I don’t know why Peridot doesn’t tell you herself. Dragon’s have the ability to sense powers and energies, so she should be able to find the woman if they ever meet.”

“That’s interesting but doesn’t answer my question.” Jasper rolls her eyes as she stands up, adjusting her sweater so the markings on her skin stay hidden.

Zarah huffs, “certain creatures have similar strands of DNA. I’m sure you’re aware of this, doctor.” She turns to Sapphire and she nods.

“It has never come up before but yes, many reptile creatures do have similarities. It would have to be a creature that is a perfect match or a creature that has ancestry that relates to dragons. I would have to investigate or if Peridot does know, I will speak with her about it. But Zarah, I need you to go home and I will call you if anything changes.”

Zarah nods, saying her goodbyes before leaving the office room. 

Jasper is glad it only took a few minutes from her day because she is excessively tired of dealing with people today. “Why did you call us down?” She asks the moment Zarah is gone. In the back of her mind she is still thinking about the fact Peridot might know more than she has been letting on in the past two years.

“I took new x-rays and did some new testing and wanted to show you something.” She hits the switch on the wall, dimming the lights and opening the file in her hands. She pulls out the photo and puts it on the LED screen on her wall. “So, this was when you brought her in. Remember, I told you she had breaks and cracks all throughout her legs and in her lower vertebrae. And this photo…” She puts another photo next to the first and Jasper glances over it. She may not have any medical training, but she can see the healed cracks and breaks were nearly gone. “See, these bones have completely healed around twelve hours in, and the others are nearly finished healing.”

“I feel like you have more to say than just her bones are healed.”

“Well, little things are really interesting. Her bones in the original photo were slightly curved which can easily just be something she was born with, but in the new photos they’ve straightened out. She also has an extra thoracic vertebra, and lumbar. Honestly her skeletal work is simply fascinating. 

“Can you say things so I can follow them?” Jasper groans, becoming increasingly frustrated the longer she is here.

“She has the same extra bones a cat has which makes her spine more flexible—”

Jasper cuts her off, “and?”

“And,” Sapphire starts before taking the photos down and turning the lights back up, “a large portion of her scales have come off, mostly around her chest, inner arms, and her stomach. Her horns completely broke apart by the six-hour mark, but they’ve regrown some. Whatever is happening to her, the causation must be based on her being a dragon. There are no known diseases or infections that could cause something like this and I have seen similar situations in some reptiles.”

“Can I talk to her?” Jasper asks quickly, almost ignoring everything she had been saying. 

“No. Not right now, she doesn’t want you to see her. She is afraid you will hate her because she looks rather different now. More human in a way."

“I’m going home then.” She looks over at Pearl who has been quiet this entire time, minding her own business and not wanting to get involved this time. “I’m at Pearl’s just…let me know, okay?” She asks with a hint of sincerity in her voice for a change.

“I’m going to talk to her now. I’ll let her know you stopped by.”

Sapphire leaves her office, allowing Jasper and Pearl to stay inside in case they needed some time to themselves. For her, she wanted to so desperately to focus on Peridot and her specific needs. She was the dragon who almost twenty-four hours ago should have been paralyzed and her body was doing this on its own. She had the interest of some other doctors but wanted to focus on this by herself. Not because she wanted the credit but because she could not find the reason for these events happening. Sapphire’s abilities as a psychic have taken her far in her career, but this was something those powers could not solve. She saw no possible paths for this situation because she could not begin to understand what was happening.

She returns to Peridot’s room with a tray of food, setting it up on the table attached to the bed. Peridot is obviously uninterested, having huddled up in the corner of the bed with two blankets wrapped around her. Without the extra scale and the thinning of her natural skin, she was now going to have to brace being cold all the time and possibly even wearing clothes. She stuck her nose up at the thought.

“You should be lying down.” Sapphire speaks as she pulls a chair close to the bed, so she can sit down.

“No. It’s too cold.” She whines, her main reason for hating hospitals was how it felt like the dead of winter inside of them. Even though it was now fall outside, it was much warmer outside, and she would rather be out there. 

“I can offer you another blanket.”

“I want to go home. I don’t want another stupid blanket.” She grumbles, pulling covers tighter around her.

“Jasper was here, and your mother stopped by.”

“I heard them, and I heard your conversation.” Peridot doesn’t mention how she snuck out of the room to listen to them.

“I forget dragons have impeccable hearing.”

“Is Jasper okay? She sounds hurt…Is it me?”

“No. It isn’t like that. Let’s focus on you for now. Your mother is under the implication that you know what is happening. I’m curious just how much you know, because Jasper told me you could not remember anything when you first met.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Is it because you know?”

She whines again, ending with an exasperated sigh.

“I won’t tell Jasper if you tell me. If it helps me as a doctor know what is happening to you, I think you should tell me.”

“I’m…probably pregnant.” She scrunches her mouth together. “I blame Jasper.”

“None of your tests…” Sapphire starts before standing up and grabbing the chart on the wall. She comes back to sit down, skimming through blood test results and her nurses’ notes. “Yes, none of your tests show that. You would have elevated levels of—”

“I don’t care.” She groans again.

“Let’s start from the beginning. How do you know?”

“My mom kept a journal from when she was pregnant, and she went through similar stuff. And no, you can’t see it. It’s mine.”  
“Can you explain that a bit more?”

“Fine. About what?”

“Your mother and the possibility of being pregnant.”

“I don’t know anything about her. I just know that she had similar symptoms and that this is what happens to dragons sometimes when their bodies aren’t built right. They can’t carry children because there is no room for their body to stretch to accompany a baby or eggs, or anything really.” Peridot looks at the food on the tray, taking the apple juice from it and puncturing it with her claws before drinking it.

“And you aren’t a fully matured dragon.” Sapphire realizes as she writes some notes down in the file.

“Nope.” She tosses the empty container on the floor before grabbing the second drink. “I shouldn’t be at this age anyway.”

“So it isn’t surprising your body would try to form into a more mature state as quickly as possible. Because of this possible pregnancy.”

“I don’t know; I’m not a doctor.” She wasn’t listening to Sapphire anymore, caught in the deathly trap of drinking both juices and the milk on the tray. 

“Let me make a call to Amethyst and see if she can come here. After that, we can make appropriate preparations and I can send you home. Are you going to eat anything?”

“I want more juice.” She pouts.

“I’ll have a nurse bring some but please try to eat. I will be back shortly.”

Sapphire stands up, setting her chart back on the wall before leaving the room. The moment she is gone Peridot carefully climbs out of bed, fixing the robe she has become loose and tightening it around her waist. She trudges to the door, looking out into the hallway carefully until she sees Sapphire go into the elevator. She knows where Sapphire’s office because she snuck out just a few minutes earlier. She is sure Sapphire is aware of this fact, but Peridot misses Jasper even if it has only been two days and even if she is afraid of Jasper seeing her in this state. She doesn’t even make it down the hallway before someone stops her, a woman she has seen exactly one time before in her life but cannot remember where.

A shapeshifter by the look of things, bleached hair that had a tinge of purple coating it, even her scrubs were a shade of lavender that suited her dark skin and eyes. She doesn’t remember the woman’s name, but she is sure she has met her once before. Peridot blinks at her, “why do I know you?”

“I’m friends with Jasper.” She crosses her arm, “and you should be in your room.”

She glares at her before heading back down the hallway and into her room, this woman following her as she does.

“Sapphire told me to meet her in here, but I guess she headed back to her office.”

Peridot shrugs before knocking the tray of food down onto the ground as she climbs onto her bed. “She said she was going to get someone and then I wanted juice, and honestly she puts me to sleep when she talks.”

“Yeah, she can do that. She was looking for me though, just got a call and I happened to be on this floor anyway.” She picks up the food on the floor—lucky it was wrapped in plastic—and sets it back on the tray. “I’m Amethyst.”

“I don’t care.” She lays on the bed, pulling covers over her head.

“It’s nice to meet you, ‘I don’t care’, I’m going to be doing your ultrasound today.”

“But you’re just a nurse.”

“I don’t see your point.” She shrugs as Sapphire comes back into the room, rolling a machine into the corner of the room. “Hey, do you know if Garnet took the day off? Oh wait, of course you know.” She snorts before she goes to the computer to begin setting things up.

“Did you need her for something?” Sapphire asks before going over to Peridot and taking the blankets from her. “I need you to lay flat and lift your gown up.” She puts the blankets on the second bed in the room and watches Peridot listen to her for once. It was rather surprising.

“Nope, but there’s a lot of gossip going on ever since they started scanning people again. I heard there was a riot the other night in the market.”

“Garnet has a job to do so I do not bother her with such trivial gossip. You also have a job to do.”

“Did you want to help or?” Amethyst did not understand the reason why Sapphire was in the room with her. Normally she did these sorts of things alone.

“No, no. I’m here out of curiosity and to make sure Peridot doesn’t bite, claw, kick, or do something else to you with me not in the room.” She crosses her arm before pulling out a second chair for her to sit on, so Amethyst can have the one near the bed.

“She can’t be that bad.”

“She bite the last nurse that took her blood and she ended up needing stitches.”

“Nah, so she’s a little temperamental. No big deal. Unless you like, see her doing something bad because then I would like to know about it.”

“Nothing bad is going to happen.” Sapphire says, unconvincingly.

“…Right.” Amethyst finishes setting up the device, opening her patient file and looking over at Peridot who was shivering on the bed. She rolls her eyes, putting on a pair of gloves before beginning the procedure. 

“What’s that?” Peridot asks as Amethyst picks up a bottle and starts to apply a gel to her stomach.

“Gel.”

“…What’s it do?”

“Prevents sound waves that come from air pockets in your skin.” 

“What’s that thing?” She asks, pointing to the next item Amethyst picks up.

“A transducer.” Amethyst sighs, knowing this was going to turn into a questions and answer game very quickly. “It will tell me if you’re pregnant.”

“How? Like, is it a magic thing where it just pops up on the screen “you’re pregnant” or—”

“Please stop talking.”

Peridot glares at her as she brings the device against her skin.

“It’ll capture images and show up on this screen.” She says, turning the screen a bit so Peridot can see it. “But, I’m not seeing anything specific…Just this spot here.” She points to the screen and it makes Sapphire stand up. She comes closer to the screen to look at it, pressing a few keys to rotate the image.

“Can we do a transvaginal ultrasound to confirm this? I’ll have the nurse prepare her for it and bring her down in an hour.” Sapphire seemed perplexed by what was on the screen, but she prints out the photos to compare them for later. She steps away, grabbing Peridot’s chart from the wall and writing down a few things. “Peridot.” She speaks the dragon’s name and she perks up. “One more test and as long as everything looks fine I can let you go home tomorrow.” She puts the chart back on the wall before leaving the room again.

“I’m really confused.” She whispers to Amethyst.

“She wants to confirm that you’re pregnant.” Amethyst cleans off her instruments and takes her gloves off, handing Peridot some tissues to wipe off her stomach which the dragon takes cautiously before using them. “There’s something there, but it is very small and in anyone else that would be an indication they were knocked up.”

“Why am I different?”

Amethyst shrugs, “Sapphire can see the future; she probably just sees something we don’t see.”

“That sounds boring. Hey! Can you bring me some juice?” She asks and Amethyst chuckles.

“Yeah, sure. I’ll see you later.” Amethyst speak, still chuckling as she brings the machine out of the room.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I realized it's almost the two year anniversary of this fanfic. Yay!  
> But, I also realized I have no idea what is happening? So, don't ask any questions and just go with it.

“Do you know where Jasper is?” Sapphire asks calmly as she enters her office, setting some papers down on her desk and looking over to Pearl. Pearl shakes her head in response, setting down the book she had her nose buried in and standing up to walk over to Sapphire. “She must be ignoring my phone calls. I’ve tried seeing where she is but there is this constant fog around her.”

“She was at my home last night and suddenly woke up, got dressed and left. She said nothing to me and I haven’t heard from her since. I know she has been out of it since we brought Peridot here, but do you think something might be wrong?”

“Maybe. She’s obviously producing static energy that I can’t surpass.” Sapphire’s demeanor was calm, as if the mystery of why Jasper was not answering her phone and why she bolted out of Pearl’s house had no impact on her. “I wanted to share some news with her while Peridot’s discharge was being taken care of. But, I suppose you could tell Jasper for me and Peridot can fill in the rest.”

“When I bring Peridot home, I’ll go inside and see if she’s there. I just don’t trust her in this state she is in right now.” Pearl sighs, knowing fully well how much energy and strength it took to handle Jasper in these situations. “So, you found out what was causing Peridot’s pain?”

“I confirmed her prognosis…” She trails off as she watches Peridot enter her office and Pearl turns to look at her. 

This was the first time in a while she had seen Peridot in her dragon form while in clothing. She was missing patches of scales; a lot of her thicker skin had thinned out around her chest and inner thighs. Without the aid of those scales and thick skin the shape of her breasts and nipples were noticeable along with the shape of her vulva. As a dragon it may have been fine, but to the public to be in such a state was highly inappropriate. The issue was finding clothing that did not make Peridot throw a tantrum. Shorts that sat right at the middle of her thighs were more comfortable for her since they were light and didn’t put as much pressure on the scales covering her hips, and the tank top was also loose enough that the fabric didn’t irritate her skin. Two things that bothered Peridot the most about wearing clothing.

Overall, Peridot looks miserable. Partly from being in the hospital but mostly from wearing clothing that did not keep her warm or comfortable. She missed Jasper, she missed being in a warm environment, and she really wanted some snacks to eat.

“What did you find out?” Pearl asks, curious but also concerned for Peridot’s wellbeing.

“She’s…” Sapphire starts, shifting in place where she stands, “pregnant.” 

“And ugly.” Peridot pouts as she walks over to Pearl. Her overall appearance was something that had also changed with the breakage of her bones. She went from looking reptilian in her face to more human. If anyone met her, they would she was anything except for a dragon at this point.

“You’re positive?” Pearl asks, rather surprised with the confirmation.

“They ran all these stupid, invasive tests.” Peridot crosses her arms like a child. “Didn’t even give me more juice.”

“Yes. From what I understand her body was not matured enough in build to carry a child. So, it bent and reformed her bones and size to make it possible. There are some notable differences from the outside, but her x-rays show elongation of specific bones, her hips are wider, and she grew somewhat in height.” Sapphire informs.

“That’s remarkable.”

“You try breaking half of your bones and tell me how remarkable that feels for you.” Peridot hisses.

“Well, you look physically well, and it is all that matters,” Pearl smiles at her but Peridot scowls. “We need to find Jasper, so I am going to take you to her place and see if she is there. If she is not and we don’t find her, you can stay with me tonight. I don’t want you to stay by yourself for the first night back home. Especially in this condition.”

“Yippee.” Peridot says unenthusiastically.

“Make sure Jasper gets these papers.” Sapphire speaks, grabbing a file from her desk to hand to Pearl. Pearl takes it to slip into her bag. “But…maybe wait until her condition improves. See if she can handle this sort of news.”

Leaving the hospital left a huge impact on Peridot’s mood as she went from angry and unpleasant, to calm and cheerful being in the warmth of the sun. The sudden switch in personality made her more agreeable and overall easier to deal with, and if Pearl would have known that a year ago it would have made her time with Peridot much more pleasant. Peridot seemed different in general, not just in her appearance or personality but there was an energy around her that changed something. Pearl could not put her finger on it; maybe it was the pregnancy or maybe Pearl just needed to rest. 

When Pearl pulls up to Jasper’s house, she notices the truck in the driveway and tries to prepare herself for any of Jasper’s shenanigans this time around. She is cautious about this because Jasper had been slowly growing out of control due to the weakening of her power, she hopes Jasper hadn’t done anything too wild and when she enters the house everything seems to be in order. The living room was cleaned from the last time Pearl had organized it and nothing felt out of place, until she sees Jasper coming out of the kitchen and notices the outfit she is flaunting. 

A buttoned-down shirt which is one too many buttons undone, it is tucked into a skirt which sits against her thighs and is far too short—and tight—for a woman of her height. Not to mention the three-inch black heels she’s wearing and the time she spent curling her thick, white hair. Pearl has never seen her act this way in hundreds of years and knew it was just another symptom of her mental state trying to appeal to people in a sexual manner. This was something she would do when she had lost too much energy and needed to regain some of it to feel better. 

“What are you wearing?” Pearl asks with a hint of confusion in her voice.

“Do you like it?” Jasper smirks, crossing her arms right underneath her breasts. It gives them an instant lift that makes Pearl blush.

Pearl is trying to not fall for this act because she is easily persuaded by Jasper when she is in this state. “You know I do.” She speaks, not meaning to say that but feeling as if she lost control of what she meant to say. “I mean, Sapphire has been calling you. Why haven’t you answered?”

“Oh, did she? My cellphone is in my bedroom if you want to head up there with me and get it.”

“No, I…” She groans, pressing her hands to her forehead. Jasper was giving her a headache already and it has only been a minute. “We need to talk to you, Peridot needs to talk to you, so when you get a minute. And don’t make that sexual.” Pearl turns around to speak to Peridot who was trying to sneak upstairs. “What are you doing?” She felt like a babysitter at this point. The moment one of them acted up the other just followed.

“Hiding.” She responds with a nod.

“Now, why would a cutie like you go off and hide?” Jasper smirks, eyeing over Peridot’s body. “Hey…Did you get taller?” She walks over to Peridot to stand next to her to notice the difference. Not just her height but her overall appearance went from a dragon with human characteristics, to a human with dragon characteristics. She reaches out to touch Peridot, but Peridot only tries to bite her hand for attempting to touch her which makes Jasper pull back.

Pearl was becoming increasingly frustrated with the two. Jasper was too busy hitting on anything that moved and Peridot was terrified of confronting Jasper about what was happening to her. “Both of you!” She practically shouts, “go to the living room, sit down and please no touching."

“Whatever.” Jasper says, watching Peridot sprint off to sit down on the couch. Jasper goes to follow her, but Pearl grabs her arm. “What? Do you want to—”

“Stop.” Pearl cuts her off and Jasper blinks at her. “I need you to focus for this.”

“I’m plenty focused. I’ve got both my eyes on your—”

“Jasper.” She warns, lifting her hand to touch Jasper’s face. “I’m going to temporarily give you some power to help calm you down, but it is not going to last long. You need to fix your situation, but you have to understand what sort of state Peridot is in before you try to.”

“What are you talking about?” Jasper can feel the sudden warmth traveling from Pearl’s hand and into her skin. It washes over her, cooling down the heat running through her veins and Jasper slowly starts to feel more like herself again.

“I can’t fix this on my own.” She drops her hands back to her side. “Go talk to Peridot and please do not touch her.” Pearl warns again, both of them understanding that the moment Jasper touched someone that the effects of Pearl’s power would reverse immediately.

Jasper nods, turning around and walking into the living room where Peridot had been impatiently waiting. She takes a seat on the far end of the couch and watches Peridot who is glaring at her. “Before you tell me about whatever happened at the hospital…When succubi use too much of their power their bodies go out of whack and try to find power boosts through…” She looks down at herself, the revealing outfit and just how much of her skin was showing was a prime example of this. “Seduction.” She notices the heels she is wearing and slips them off, setting them to the side of the couch. 

“Why can’t Pearl help?” Peridot shifts on the couch until she is comfortable, wiggling against the cushions until she brings her legs up onto the couch nearly kicking Jasper when she stretches her legs out.

“Why would she be able to help me?” Jasper turns to Pearl who joins them in the living room. “The only thing that helps is restoring the energy.”

Peridot groans, “but she’s a succubus, too.”

Jasper nearly panics when Peridot says the word. She keeps her eyes on Pearl, “I did not tell her anything. I swear.”

“How…How do you know that?” Pearl asks, trying her best not to show any emotions.

“Long story short, I can see auras.”

“No, please tell me the story.” Pearl sits down on the edge of the coffee table.

Peridot whines, “I don’t wanna.”

“Peridot…”

“Will you bring me chips?”

“…Sure. But, tell us first.”

“Fine. So, everyone has a specific aura color depending on what type of being they are. Those colors correlate across species so humans normally have similar energies.”

“So, it’s somehow similar to how we see emotions?” Pearl turns to Jasper and Jasper shrugs in response.

“I’m not done telling the story!” 

“Please, continue.”

“So, if two people are the same species they have the same or very similar energies. You two have the exact same energy. I remember I asked Jasper what you were once, and she wouldn’t tell me, but she told me the story about how you died, and she saved you. That could only mean she turned you into a succubus. The end. Now I’m bored.”

Pearl stands up, leaving the living room without saying anything in response.

“You need to give her some time with this. She has a complicated relationship with it…” Jasper responds, and Peridot rolls her eyes. “But, the energy a succubus gives off during sex is not the same as a human or even a dragon. She can share energy, but it can only do so much to help.” She tries to think of an easier way to put this, but Jasper knows from experience Peridot is the best person to help her restore her energy. While Peridot was young, the energy and power she had was much stronger than anyone else she knew. She just did not want to put Peridot in the position of being forced to help her.

“That sounds unfortunate. Can I go now?”

“No. What did Sapphire say?”

“Well, I really wanted apple juice and she wouldn’t give me any.” Peridot crosses her arms, pouting like a little kid again.

“That’s great, but what did she say?” She turns when she hears Pearl coming into the living room, handing Peridot a bowl of potato chips she had gotten for her. “Can one of you tell me what happened?”

“Sapphire thinks—” Pearl starts, and Peridot interrupts her.

“Let me tell it!”

“Why are you being such a brat? You’re normally childish, but why are you bossing Pearl around?” Jasper asks and Peridot stickers her tongue out at her before beginning to eat some of the chips in the bowl. “Am I doing this to you?” She knows her emotions are unbalanced and it could be having a bigger impact on the people around her, but she was not expecting such a drastic change so quickly. Pearl helping to settle Jasper’s emotions, must have sped up the imbalance in the room. 

“Doing what? Getting me pregnant? Yeah. You already did that. I want some juice.”

Jasper freezes. Trying to process what was happening and what Peridot had just said. The issue was, there was so much happening at once that Jasper could not figure out which situation to deal with first. She wants to get Pearl out of the house to diminish some of the power floating around, and she wants to talk to Peridot about her sudden pregnancy announcement. The most important thing was settling out some of this power by losing a conductor of it all: Pearl.

“Yes, of course.” Pearl begins to leave the room and Jasper grabs her arm before she can. “Did you need something, too?”

“Yes. Go home.” 

Pearl blinks, “but—”

“Go home.” She demands.

Pearl bows before gathering her things, making sure to leave the file she had been given by Sapphire on the table before leaving the house.

With Pearl gone, the shift in energies seems to focus itself on Peridot. This manic energy centers around her and forces her personality to change and her emotions to become more wild and unpredictable. Jasper wants to help her, but the moment she does the sexual desires Jasper had prior to Pearl helping her would come back stronger. She could help Peridot and direct all the power and emotion back onto herself, but she would not be able to control herself in that sort of situation.

“Well?” Peridot speaks as she sets the bowl down, crossing her arms over her chest. “You don’t have anything to say about what you did to me?”

“Are you really pregnant?”

“Duh. Do you not know how to listen? And here I thought you were smart. I guess not.”

“Can you have a normal conversation with me?” 

“Can you be useful then?”

Jasper reaches out to the coffee table to pick up the folder Pearl had left. When she opens it there are photocopied documents with Sapphire’s handwriting on them. It was all the tests that had been run, the discharge paperwork, and of course the photos from the ultrasounds that Peridot had been given. While there was no obvious appearance of something growing inside her, Sapphire had marked some notes from other testing done that had confirmed the pregnancy. “I can’t talk to you about this…Not like this. You’re clearly not in a clear state of mine, and I never was.” 

This pregnancy was one of the most important factors of Jasper’s life, because she had dreamed of having a real family and with Peridot it was something possible. But, there was no use of speaking with her in this state. Peridot was going to continue to become pushy and angry unless Jasper had taken back that energy and emotion inside of her. Jasper sighs while she thinks about it because the only way to fix herself was to feed off energy from someone else. Luckily, she had Peridot who had enough power and energy for her to feed off, but the repercussions of the situation was going to leave both of them drained.

She sets the folder down on the table and turns to look at Peridot, reaching her hand out to touch her arm. Peridot tries to pull away just out of her own internal frustration which has been building up inside of her since she entered the house with Pearl, but she feels relaxed when Jasper touches her. The emotions settling inside of her and the power traveling back into Jasper as its original source, not only taking over her body, but also taking over her mind.


End file.
